Kzine Issue 4

by Graeme Hurry

  Saturdays the truck stop is packed. All those truckers, tourists, gamblers, musicians, hookers, dope dealers and Vamps milling around make it easy to pull a dine-and-dash. Whenever a waiter chases one of us street kids out the back door and runs into a coyote wearing a shit-eating grin, the look on his face is priceless. Nobody ever puts two and two together! Because most humans know about werewolves, but not about Coyotl. The one exception is Deputy Ackerman.

  Arms crossed, she watches us devour the bag of burritos she’s brought.

  ‘Living out here’s dangerous, see. You kids should get yourselves into a program. There’s got to be a special school that will take you.’

  ‘Like an obedience school, yeah?’ Angst sneers around his burrito. Lexa growls at him. She’s Alpha so Angst shuts up.

  ‘I know you guys are … different.’ Deputy Ackerman tips back her Stetson and squints at the sun. ‘But this area is high risk, see. And it’s young people who get the worst of it …’

  A mesquite bush trembles. Four desert-worn Mexican men and a woman with two kids limp into view, shivering and hyperventilating. The gallon milk jug one man holds contains a precious inch of water. Ackerman’s hand goes to her radio mike.

  ‘Delta two-six … I have seven illegals. Grid four-two-four-nine, parking lot of the truck stop. Two children. Send a paramedic.’ She signs off. ‘See?’ She stares pointedly at us. ‘Think about it.’ Then she approaches the group of border-jumpers, hands raised. ‘No tenga miedo, amigos. I’m here to help. Relájese …’

  ‘So,’ Lexa whispers. ‘Let’s go.’

  Despite grumbling bellies we abandon the half-eaten bag of burritos and slip into the bushes. We fall to all fours and melt into our true form. By the time Ackerman looks again, we’re a pack of coyotes vanishing down the arroyo.

  Ackerman is right about the border being dangerous. But she has no idea why.

  Thousands of undocumented illegals cross the desert each year in hope of finding work. Hundreds die of exposure and dehydration trying to enter the country or are murdered and left behind by the people smugglers when they can’t keep up. Vamps love to hunt around here because any kills they make register as just more unexplained deaths in the desert. Deputy Ackerman and her friends haven’t figured it out yet.

  After leaving the Deputy, we run to the top of the rise a mile behind the truck stop. Lexa sits. ‘So. Live ones,’ she yips. ‘Looks like Ringo and his gang missed a few.’ Reena, Tippi and Goyo catch up and sit deferentially below us. As junior members they have to wait their turn for high ground. Lexa looks to me.

  ‘Getting away from those illegals was smart.’ This is as much as I am willing to offer with buzzards circling overhead. Ringo has sent his familiars to monitor the group Ackerman is now bringing to the containment area. The Vampire lord plans to harvest them later.

  ‘Ringo is scat, yeah.’ Angst starts chasing his tail. He ‘accidentally’ edges out from among the betas to touch higher ground. Angst has been testing his limits of late and Lexa has been content to let him.

  ‘Sun’s dipping. The pickings at Lava Land should be good.’ Lexa waits until Angst tires and sits before jumping up. ‘So. Let’s hunt!’ she yips. And we’re off.

  Our band streak across the desert as the sky fades to burnt orange. We break into pairs for the hunt: Goyo and Tippi, Angst and Reena, Lexa and me. Pretty soon the marquee of the ruined amusement park appears above the cactus tops:

  L V A L N D

  ‘You four go in the main gate,’ Lexa yips. ‘Dak and I will circle in behind. Meet up by the Ferris wheel at moonrise!’

  We break away from the band and shoot up the hill behind the abandoned service road that once connected Lava Land to the highway. We slip through the hole in the fence we use when in human form to come drink and get stoned and play on the broken rides. But Lava Land holds charms for us when we’re in our dogness, too. Like the colony of jackrabbits that’s overrun the place in the past month. We’re no sooner through the fence than one appears. It freezes at the sight of us, waits two heartbeats then streaks away into the park.

  I launch, Lexa menacing my flank. We’ll hunt together, sure, but whoever does the take-down gets the bigger share of the prize so it’s competitive as well. We unite against common enemies, but within the band it is constant competition. This is how we stay sharp in this dangerous land.

  The hare starts running a wide circle. Jacks are smart critters, but we’re smarter. With a yip, I break diagonally to intercept him at the far end of his loop.

  I dash into a press of rotting buildings. Erosion has turned one – a big concrete structure – into a square stone valley with a half-roof. I am halfway across when I sense movement in the doorway. Sound. I veer into shadows. The human part of me recognizes radio static. I wrinkle my snout. A figure steps into view.

  ‘ … confirm Delta two-six.’

  The steel edge of a badge glimmers in his flashlight’s glow. I recognize a member of Ackerman’s pack in the same instant something stirs in the ruined rafters.

  Vamps.

  Two of them hunt the deputy - young, eyes gleaming, the putrescent stench of their fangs cloying. They’re starving. Ringo keeps the young ones in his group famished so they’ll be all the more vicious. The deputy is doomed. My instinct to self-preservation stumbles against loyalty to Ackerman. If she were here … But she’s not. I should be making a break for it but instead I watch, helpless, as the Vamps close in.

  The cop’s radio crackles: ‘Delta four-one. What’s your twenty?’

  The deputy’s hand rises to his mike. One of the Vamps shifts and the cop notices. Freezes. Grabs for his side-arm and the Vamp plunges downward. The deputy manages to get off a shot before the Vamp is on him, its jaws unhinging to bury fangs in the cop’s shoulder. The sheriff drops, the first Vamp still attached to him as the second one hits the ground.

  That’s when Lexa bolts out of the shadows full speed and takes the second Vamp by the throat, her momentum spilling them into a tangled heap. I launch into the fray and we savage the Vamp from both sides as the other one breaks from feeding on the cop to learn that it’s outnumbered. With an outraged shriek, the Vamp vaults to the rafters and disappears.

  Lexa gives a final shakes of her jaws. The second Vamp’s neck breaks and it lies still. We leave the body and rush to the deputy who is gasping for air in a pool of his own blood.

  ‘Delta four-one come in …’

  Lexa gaze meets mine in mutual understanding. He’s finished.

  ‘Come in Delta four-one … Delta four-one, do you copy?’

  ‘Not now Dak.’ Ackerman brushes past me to join the growing group of sheriffs shifting and glaring like a pack of angry dogs in the truck stop parking lot. One of their own has been murdered. No outsider is to be trusted, not even the skinny kid in the hoodie and torn jeans to whom Ackerman speaks almost daily. I turn and hike back to Lexa, who raises her eyebrows.

  ‘This is bad.’ I shake my head. ‘The sheriffs are out for blood. Ringo will be too. Ours.’

  Lexa nods tiredly. Fear floods me. Lexa is never tired, never discouraged. But now, faced with the deepest crisis of our lives she is overwhelmed. We remain in human form as we cut through the cacti to the abandoned storage containers where the others wait. Angst rises as we approach. He tips a bottle of tequila to his lips then passes it to Goyo.

  ‘Told ya, yeah?’ Angst sneers. I don’t much like his grin. ‘Ackerman doesn’t care. Now Ringo and his kindred will hunt us. We should offer them a boon to get them off our backs.’

  Reena and Tippi, sharing a joint, pause to look. Violence simmers in their eyes.

  ‘You gonna be Alpha now, Angst?’ I step to him. ‘Think you know best?’

  ‘Better than her!’ He thrusts a finger at Lexa. ‘Dumb bitch screwed us starting a war with the Vamps?!’

  I clench my fist. ‘Don’t call her that!’

  Lexa raises her hands. ‘Listen you two –’

  Angst chooses that moment to lou
nge at Lexa and get a hand around her windpipe. He slams her against the sea-can. He has been awaiting his chance to challenge for leadership and takes it now in human form, when he’s larger than Lexa. It’s not our way but an Alpha challenge must not to be interrupted. Lexa growls and twists. Angst holds tight but recoils when fur sprouts from between his fingers.

  ‘She can’t do that!’ Goyo screams. He gets two steps toward them before I double him over with a kick to the stomach. Angst has let go Lexa and is backing away, hands up against the swirling fury of claws and teeth she has become. And for an instant it looks like sanity will prevail.

  Then Reena surprises everyone by hurling a chunk of rock that bounces off of Lexa’s skull. Lexa twists and flees into the desert with a squeal.

  I fling Angst to the ground and stand over him.

  ‘This isn’t over!’ I snarl. Then I shift and go after Lexa.

  It takes me an hour to catch up. Finally the effects of Lexa’s wound and fatigue combine to slow her down. She falls to a trot by the old highway bridge as the sky darkens and a sheriff’s car appears in the distance.

  We dive into a drainage ditch and stay low until it passes. Right now any predator is a suspect.

  ‘Buzzards are back.’

  Lexa raises her head to peer through the splintered windshield. From our hide-out in the cab of this abandoned truck we can just discern the faint grey X of a vulture circling over Lava Land. A second later he is joined by two others.

  ‘Illegals crossing.’ She lays her chin back on her paws. ‘So. Ringo won’t be far behind.’

  ‘We’ll have to move before dark.’ I sniff the scab that has formed over her head wound. Twenty-four hours hiding here have done wonders for Lexa. But she is still dizzy and unsteady on her paws. ‘You saw what those Vamps did to that deputy.’

  ‘Is it true he was searching for a lost kid?’

  ‘That’s what I overheard the sheriffs saying.’ I imagine some poor scared Mexican kid hiding out in the desert with Vamps closing in on him from all sides and remember what Ackerman said about kids catching the worst of it out here.

  ‘I brought this mess on us all. So.’ Lexa speaks with her eyes closed. ‘I shouldn’t have killed that Vamp.’

  ‘If we don’t stand up for our friends then we’re no better than Vamps. You did the right thing, Alph.’

  ‘I’m not Alpha anymore.’ Lexa’s misery is audible in her voice.

  ‘Until there’s a fair fight you are!’

  She says nothing and we rest as the sun shifts a quarter-inch closer to the peaks. By late afternoon the vultures have moved on, tracking their prey to the outskirts of the nearest town. I nudge Lexa’s hindquarters. With a groan she rises to all fours and gives a yip confirming she is fit to travel. We drop to the sand and move out.

  ‘Angst’s notion of a boon to the Vamps is fool’s talk.’ Lexa pants slightly as she limps along. ‘A deal with Ringo is a dance with the devil.’

  ‘This is devil’s country,’ I reply. The sand burns and the air bristles with thorns and dormant violence. ‘Enough killing to last a lifetime. For two-leggeds as well as four. Life’s cheap out here, Alph.’

  ‘Stop calling me that.’

  We stay low until we find the break in the fence and slip through. The boardwalk is still and we do our best not to disturb that stillness as we slink into a deserted ticket kiosk. I tell Lexa to stay put while I hunt.

  ‘You’re a fool Dak. You should kill me then go back and claim Alpha. You can take Angst.’

  ‘I know it. But I’m doing what you’d do. Which makes you a better Alpha than either of us. Now hush up until I can land us a jack for dinner.’

  ‘So go, fool,’ she yips. But her affection is obvious. I leap onto the midway. The afternoon is bottoming out, its residual heat and sunlight ballooning one last time before it deflates into night. We generally hunt at dawn and dusk, when critters are either coming or going from their dens so now feels like an odd time to be out. But it confers the element of surprise.

  I commence sniffing. A galaxy of scents: dried mouse scat, rotting wood, shoe and clothing smells from long-gone visitors, decade-old cotton candy, traces of evaporated sweat, cigarette smoke, vomit, hand lotion lingering on banisters. And among it all: human blood. Fresh.

  I pause and cock my ear into the wind. And catch the distinct sound of a child trying with all its might to cry as quietly as possible.

  A child.

  Movement on the cliffs above. A human shape stands in silhouette against the setting sun. Sheriff? I wonder, or Vamp? But twisting my nose into the wind, I catch the whiff of marijuana mingled with mescal and the vaguely dog-like odor of our kind. Then movement (the shift of a hip, a toss of the head) confirms: Angst. As I watch he is joined by Reena. They shift and the band moves down the rise toward the park in a tight column like an invading army.

  I hurry to tell Lexa: ‘Angst is coming.’

  ‘He’ll be tracking that kid.’ She rises shakily to her paws. ‘The one that’s trying not to cry? So. Angst has cut a deal with Ringo. He’s come to claim his boon for the Vamps.’

  ‘Humans. Vamps.’ I close my eyes. ‘Now Angst.’

  As we light out, I think about the god who forgave the humans while they were killing him. Perhaps humans and Vamps need to believe in gods because they can’t deal with all the bad stuff they do.

  The boy has taken refuge in the remains of a concession trailer. We find him as night falls and Angst and the band slip through the broken fence and begin casting for spoor. Lexa can barely stand.

  ‘Dak, get the kid and slip out the back. I’ll hold them off ‘til you’re clear.’

  ‘Lexa, no. You can’t by yourself –’

  ‘Dak that’s somebody’s child! The humans may not care and to the Vamps he’s just food but we walk in both worlds. So we care. Because somebody has to!’ Her eyes blaze with conviction as they grasp mine. ‘I won’t survive the trip back. This is my last order as your Alpha. Now go.’

  I swallow in a dry throat and turn away. At the edge of the steps I shift human.

  The boy huddles behind the rusted deep fat fryer that once served up fries to tourists. No older than six, he bleeds from a gash on his leg the length of a hand. Left behind. Because he couldn’t keep up.

  ‘Hoy, hijo.’ I grin at him. ‘It’s okay. Soy aqui para ayudar.’

  The boy starts at the low growl from outside. Lexa, warning off the band. It’s started.

  ‘Venga.’ I reach out my hand. The boy hesitates. But at the first yip and snarl outside he grasps my wrist like it’s a life preserver in a stormy sea. I haul him to his feet, thinking: okay, this is the world we live in. One where children get abandoned in the desert and power is reserved for those who take it by force, leaving only the outcasts to care. We Coyotls may live on the fringes, but we see some things very clearly.

  An anguished howl. Angst. Lexa is giving as good as she gets.

  ‘Come on.’

  I haul the boy upright. Cradling him in my arms I impel him to the back of the trailer where an emergency hatch stands partway open. I kick it wide and we drop, sprinting for the fence. The screams from the front of the trailer are deafening now. The fight reaches its climax.

  An excited keening rises as Lexa makes her final stand.

  After I drop the kid with Ackerman, it takes a few days but others like me gradually begin discovering the truck stop. I have to warn off a few bigger males but within a week or so a handful of betas have accepted my dominance and elect to remain. By Saturday night things are hopping again. Truckers and tourists pack the joint and I am preparing to pull my first dine-and-dash in a week when a hand touches my shoulder.

  ‘Visitor, Alph. Female.’ Vinck’s breath at my ear is tobacco-harsh. ‘She’s hurt some.’

  In the parking Treeni and Loona are fussing over a girl who sits, head bowed, dabbing a rag on a gash on her arm. She looks up as I approach.

  Reena.

  I kneel. ‘What happened?�
�

  ‘Angst.’ Her voice trembles. ‘Found another mate. She drove me off and …’ Reena tries hard not to cry. Fails.

  ‘Shh.’ I pull her to me. ‘You can stay.’

  ‘She from the pack that killed your Lexa?’ Vinck frowns. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t let her stay, Alph.’

  There will be time to explain later but for now I just hold up a hand. And because I am Alpha Vinck shuts up.

  Poor Reena. She came to the brink of glory and failed. Now she is an outcast. Left behind. Nowhere to go. But we’ll take her in. Because we walk in both worlds. We care. Because somebody has to.

  THE SLEEPERS

  by Ciro Faienza

  The holding cell had windows, but Lech didn’t care. What was there to see? All of it had been said before — dust; diamonds; grains of sand. He preferred starry abyss. It was true they were legion, the tiny brilliances drifting past his window as the ring circled the station axis, but so far away, what did it matter? Unknowable distance reduced them all to pinpricks of aged and brittle light.

  Besides which, he had business to attend to. To the Japanese woman seated across from him, he said, ‘I already answered these questions.’

  ‘Mr. Karolczak,’ she began, careful with the pronunciation, ‘I’m a claims investigator, not the FBI. That’s why I had to ask to see you.’ Sensible suit, conservative hair, Mona Lisa expression with burgeoning traces of age. She had been less emotional (if not quite friendlier) than the bullish arresting agents.

  ‘Insurance,’ Lech answered. ‘Thought the rig and equipment were covered, so long as it’s on a job.’

  She looked down to the pad in front of her. ‘The Arrigato and associated installations — ‘ she looked up, ‘— are covered. But your company incurred significant losses when the mining rights to 4769 Castalia expired. They have a policy to protect them from such losses.’

  ‘The failure-to-exercise clause? There’s insurance for that?’

  ‘For most things out here. Space is a risky venture.’

  ‘How’s it work?’

  She folded her hands. ‘Your company must prove a reasonable effort to extract the ore, and that the primary factors contributing to the failure were external — espionage, Acts of God, etc.’