Rangers

by Chloe Garner

  “No, electrical, combustion, and chemical,” she said. “Hard to blow a glowstick out, or pull its batteries.”

  Jason bent the corners of his mouth down. He’d never thought of that.

  “It will be okay,” Sam said. “We’ll only be a little way behind you, and goblins don’t like being around humans, especially ones with guns.”

  The rancher returned.

  “Carl says the truck’s no good. There’s a river between here and there that’s formed up in the rain. You can ride, or you can stay here.”

  “I’ll go,” Samantha said. “They’ll follow up on some other information we were chasing down. Give me a second to get the important stuff switched over?” she asked.

  “Sure,” the man said. “We’ll be ready to head out when you get back.”

  “You don’t have to go out on your own,” Sam said. Samantha hoisted her backpack and led them back to the Cruiser.

  “That’s not the issue. I don’t like not having my backpack, but I really hate leaving you…” she said, cutting herself off.

  “Leaving him what?” Jason asked.

  “Like this.”

  Jason looked at Sam. He could see the first signs of the headache coming back. Samantha put her hand on Sam’s chest and his eyes closed, like he was savoring something sweet, and when he opened his eyes again, he looked normal.

  “Creepy,” Jason said.

  “Your bag,” Samantha said. Jason opened it again.

  “What can’t you live without for a few hours?” she asked. He looked through it briefly, already knowing what was there.

  “I’ve got replacements for everything in here,” he said, slapping the side of the car.

  “So I can take it as is?”

  “Sure.”

  She took a notebook, a camera, and several empty glass vials out of her backpack and added them to his.

  “I want my hatchet, too, but…”

  He pulled the shotgun out and put it into the back of the Cruiser.

  “You shouldn’t need iron shot for this,” he said. She nodded and added the hatchet.

  “So what am I looking for, specifically?” she asked.

  “Teethmarks,” Jason said, ticking off on his fingers. “Shape, depth, number per set. Look for a clean mark on a skin, if you can. Once they get to innards, things get shreddy pretty fast. Number of individuals. Hard to tell. Look for different sizes of feet, different sizes of mouths, if all else fails, count the number of cows that were eaten hard and the ones that were just toys. We’ll figure the rest out later. Which organs they went after. Can you tell a heart from lungs from liver?” he asked. Samantha nodded.

  “Really?” Sam asked.

  “Didn’t you learn that in high school?” she asked.

  “This ain’t highschool, Sweetheart,” Jason said.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Go on.”

  “If any of them were injured. If they’re demonic, they’ll turn to a pile of dust if something kills them. They bleed tar black. If you find green goo, or purple, drop everything and get back here.”

  “Shade,” Sam prompted.

  “Right. Our rancher friend may be able to tell you how long the cows have been dead. You want to figure out if it would have happened in the shade or not.”

  “I can tell you how long they’ve been dead,” Samantha said.

  “Really?” Sam asked, more emphatic. Jason frowned at him.

  “Later,” he said. He looked at Samantha. “Though, that is weird.”

  She shrugged and tipped her head to one side, agreeing.

  “I think that’s it,” Jason said. “That looked like a nice camera.”

  “It is.”

  “Take lots of pictures. If you miss anything, we might be able to catch it.”

  “You sure you don’t want to just come?” Samantha teased, slinging Jason’s bag over her shoulder. Now that she had committed to it, she seemed a lot more at ease. Jason hesitated.

  “I fall off,” Sam said, jerking his thumb at Jason. “He acts like a little girl. We’ve tried this before. It doesn’t work.”

  Jason glared at Sam, then gave Samantha a fake smile.

  “And now we have you to do all of the horse riding that needs done.”

  She shrugged and tossed her hair.

  “You know, I do what I can to help out.”

  She looked at Sam.

  “You’re okay?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told her.

  “If it gets bad, just go sit in hot water and don’t drown. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She put her hand on his chest again and again there was the weird moment when Sam’s eyes slid and dropped his head back, then she was off. Jason wasn’t sure whether or not he should look away.

  “Dude, you know what that looks like, right?” he asked.

  “Shut up,” Sam answered, watching her.

  “What is she doing, exactly?” Jason asked, and thought about adding something suggestive, but decided Sam wouldn’t take that well, today.

  “I don’t know.”

  Samantha hoisted herself up onto a horse and waved, and she was off with a group of three young, weathered cowboys and the rancher. Sam and Jason waved back.

  “You jealous?” Jason asked.

  “No,” Sam said. Jason waited. “Maybe a little.”

  “So will you tell me what’s going on, now?” Jason asked.

  Sam walked around the Cruiser and got in, pulling on his seatbelt as Jason started the engine. Jason looked at him and sucked on his lips audibly, cuing Sam.

  “Where do you want me to start?” Sam asked.

  “Where would you start?” Jason countered.

  “I like her,” Sam said. “A lot.”

  “What happened while I was with the Iara?” Jason asked.

  Sam looked out the window.

  “Mostly… we just talked. And looked at things.”

  “You get with her?”

  “You’re sick. Never even kissed her.”

  Jason grunted.

  “Sad. Then what?”

  “Then she acts like it never happened. The last day she got weird again, and then… well, you saw it.”

  Jason nodded.

  “She’s taking distance.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the way into Kansas City?” Jason asked. “The psychic thing?”

  “Night before last, I got a headache,” Sam said.

  “This I know,” Jason said. Sam nodded, waving for Jason to wait.

  “It was bad. The worst I’ve ever had. My chest was all tight and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My guts were twisted up like… Sharp pain. And I was so cold. And I thought, maybe this is what a migraine is like, or something. I just need to sleep. And I laid there, and it felt like the room was watching me. Like there were black eyes everywhere that I couldn’t see. I could just feel them.”

  Jason cocked an eyebrow at him and Sam rolled his eyes.

  “I don’t know. It was weird. And then you came back, and… I was watching you walk in from the ceiling. I could see me, too. And I thought it was just, hey, maybe something I ate, I don’t know. But you went to bed, and I was still watching from the ceiling, or from the bathroom, or from under your bed. Under your bed, Jason. I could still see you, and I could still see me. And there were noises. And things watching. And then things got weird.”

  “Then things got weird,” Jason said. Sam widened his eyes.

  “It didn’t make sense. I can’t even describe it to you. Just.” Sam looked away, his eyes haunted. “They knew I was there.”

  Jason looked for something light to say, but couldn’t find anything.

  “Then she knocked on the door, and I could see what she was wearing before you opened the door. And I didn’t understand. I thought I was dreaming, but I felt so awake. My whole body still hurt, and the headache never got any better. And…”

  Sam trailed off, and Jason waited until he had turned ont
o the little two-lane road at the edge of the ranch to prompt him.

  “What?”

  “She glowed.”

  “She what?”

  “I don’t know. She looked like she does, just… She glowed, too.”

  “Like an angel?” Jason asked sarcastically.

  “No, just… she was lighter than everything else. I don’t know. But she woke me up and I saw her through my eyes, instead of from my nightstand, and she didn’t glow any more. But my head hurt so bad. And…”

  Jason waved at him to continue.

  “Like pulling teeth,” Jason muttered.

  “She touched the back of my neck, and it was like, the rest of my body just… faded. It hurt, and I still couldn’t breathe, but just for a second, it was okay.”

  Jason looked at him, then looked back at the road.

  “Dude, you need to get laid.”

  He glanced back at Sam, then watched the road again. It was the best he could come up with.

  <><><>

  Jason and Sam walked into the main office of the local paper.

  “Hi, I’m Jason and this is my brother Sam. We’re interested in the articles you’ve been writing about the wolf attacks?” he said, as they found their way to the right office. The woman looked up and frowned.

  “I don’t have time to gossip with a couple of strangers,” she said.

  “We’re not looking for gossip, Miss,” Sam said. “We’re with an environmental concern in Omaha, trying to figure out why a pack of wolves has made it this far south. We were hoping you could help us map the pack’s territory.”

  “That might not be a total waste of my time. We haven’t run anything like that, yet.”

  “We noticed,” Jason said. Sam shouldered him as subtly as he could.

  “Well, let’s go find a map,” the woman said. Sam pulled the map he had printed out of his notebook, and she pursed her lips pityingly.

  “I can do much better than that,” she said, and led the way to a conference room with a six-foot-by-six-foot map of the county. She looked smugly at Sam and he put his map away.

  “Well, okay, then,” he said.

  They spent the next hour watching her go through her notes and put pins up on the map, as Sam took notes on his mini-map.

  “That’s about it,” she said, wiping her hands together after she put up the pin for the ranch where Samantha was presently on horseback. They covered a broad piece of land, most of which was unoccupied, but the range was dangerously close to the town.

  “Are there any caves or abandoned buildings in this region?” Jason asked. Sam cringed. Jason clearly hadn’t realized how big a region the reporter was indicating. She scoffed.

  “Sure there are a lot of caves, a lot of abandoned buildings. That’s a hundred eighty square miles.”

  “Ah,” Jason said, sitting back down.

  “They do seem to have a pretty clear-cut territory, though,” she said. “You boys have any idea what drove them this far south?”

  “We’re looking for migrations they could have followed, but haven’t found anything promising, yet,” Sam said. She nodded.

  “Well, that’s it. I’m going back to work. You two can show yourself out.”

  They made it back to the car, and Jason snorted.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” he said.

  “Not really,” Sam said. “If they’re goblins, they have a hunting range from their lair. We’ve probably only got a couple square miles of area in the middle of that that are really worth looking at. We’ll go pull up satellite pictures and see if anything looks promising.”

  “I don’t even want to ask how we plan on getting there,” Jason muttered. Sam snorted.

  “Run alongside as Sam rides?” he asked. “When do you think we should head back out to the ranch?”

  “It’s probably about time. You feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sam.”

  “I can feel it. There are more shadows, again, and things are watching me, but I’m fine.”

  He rolled down the window and put his arm out in the sun. Whether or not it actually helped, it felt like it helped, and that was all he was looking for.

  The drive from town out to the ranch was more than an hour. When they got there, they could see Samantha standing out in a corral by the main barn. She was standing with a horse, maybe talking to it. Two cowboys sat on the fence watching her. Sam and Jason sat for a moment, watching her rest her forehead against the horse’s face as she stroked its neck.

  “Okay, now, maybe I’m jealous,” Sam said. Jason tipped his head.

  “Me, too.”

  He got out of the car. Samantha looked up when she heard the doors close. She smiled and vaulted gracefully over the fence, saying something to the cowboys. She picked up Jason’s duffel bag and trotted over.

  “So?” Jason asked. Sam was still watching the cowboys, who were still watching Samantha.

  “More than a dozen,” she said. “How many more, I couldn’t say. The place was chaos. Teeth like a gremlin. Too many to figure out what organs they might have been targeting, but they didn’t touch the meat. The cows were in the middle of a grove of trees, so definitely in the shade. Blood on some of their horns, but it doesn’t look like they managed to ash any.” She paused and wrinkled up her face in disgust. “Pity.”

  She looked over at Sam.

  “How are you doing?”

  By now, he was jerking around again, trying to catch the darkness in the corner of his eye, and the headache was on the verge of making his hands shake. She could apparently see it in his face, because she nodded and put her hand on his chest. The warm, unknotting rush almost dropped him to his knees.

  “He’s getting worse,” she said softly.

  “Is that bad?” Jason asked. Sam was still panting a bit in relief, but he looked up in time to see her purse her lips as she watched him. She shook her head.

  “No. You just need to take me back to the hotel so I can get some sleep before tonight.”

  She turned at a call from the rancher and dropped her bag for Jason, jogging back across the yard to shake hands with the man. He waved at Sam and Jason, who waved back, then he tipped his hat at Samantha, and she turned and nodded at Sam and Jason, walking back.

  “We’re ready,” she said. “Let’s head out.”

  She got into the back seat and pulled out her camera, handing it to Sam. She navigated it for him, scrolling back through pictures. He zoomed in on a couple.

  “Goblins. Definitely,” he said. “And there were a lot of them,” he said. He showed the camera to Jason. The ribs were scraped clean on the inside.

  “Great,” Jason said. “They aren’t supposed to be around in groups that big.”

  “Why not?” Samantha asked, taking the camera back.

  “They’re kind of like a nuclear reaction,” Sam said. “They live in tight little groups, but once they get too big, the infighting gets bad, and they tend to split.”

  “Seriously?” Jason asked. “A nuclear reaction?”

  “She got it,” Sam said more defensively than he felt.

  “Sure,” Samantha said, sitting back in her seat. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We’ll go back to the hotel…” Jason said.

  “You are not going to say ‘and drop you off’,” Samantha said. Sam grinned.

  “Fine. We’ll go back to the hotel and pretend not to drop you off, then Sam and I will head out and go ransack the nest.”

  “I’m going to lift your keys,” she said. Jason snorted.

  “I’d love to see it, Sweetheart.”

  Sam caught the sarcastic look she made at the back of Jason’s head and grinned.

  “We don’t even know where the nest is. And honestly, Jason, I need sleep. We shouldn’t even risk being out there after dark. We should go in the morning.”

  Samantha cleared her throat, and he laughed, giving her an apologetic look.

  “I don’t think you shoul
d be there, either, but no one is sneaking off.”

  She gave him a dark look.

  “Look, I appreciate everything you’re doing for me. From the bottom of my heart. But goblins are mean, and they’re much bigger than gremlins, and if you don’t do it right, they’ll do a lot worse than scratch up your arm.”

  “Exactly. And you’re compromised,” she said. He spun in his seat, mouth open. She was smiling.

  “Oh, you’re going to go there?” he asked. She slid her head back and forth sarcastically.

  “If you make me.”

  <><><>

  They got back to the hotel and Samantha changed out of her muddy and horsey clothes, then went over to where Sam and Jason were going over satellite photos of the area where they thought the nest would be.

  “I need a minute,” she said, touching Sam’s arm. He stood and she walked him over to the couch.

  “Sit,” she said. “I’m going to see how much I can do for you. Tell me the second anything feels weird.”

  “Other than all of it?” Jason muttered from the table. She glanced over her shoulder at him and rolled her eyes. She knelt on the couch and put her hand on Sam’s chest.

  “Are you ready?” she asked. He nodded. She pulled deep on the pool of energy she had stored up, willing it into his body. Her hand warmed and began to tingle, as though she were beginning to feel sensation as it radiated off of his skin. He reached up and closed his hand around her wrist. His skin was warm.

  “Stop,” he said after another few seconds. She cut the flow of energy and watched him as he opened his eyes. He looked up at her, then let his eyes drift closed again.

  “I only know vaguely what I’m doing,” she said softly. “You have to tell me.”

  “No, I…” He paused, apparently looking for words. She waited. “It feels like I could drift away,” he said finally.

  “You two need some alone time?” Jason asked from the table. Samantha leapt off the couch, realizing the intimacy of her posture with a start. Jason looked over.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. She shook her head, swallowing hard.

  “I…” she said, but there wasn’t anything she particularly wanted to say after that.

  “You embarrassed her,” Sam said, his eyes still closed. Samantha ground her teeth. That wasn’t very helpful, either.

  “Hey, it’s not that big a deal,” Jason said. “If you want me to leave, just ask.”