by John Inman
The blood room had been finished for a couple of weeks now. Walls, ceiling, floor. When the trapdoor was closed at the top of the cellar stairs, Terry had rigged two sliding beams of steel made from galvanized fence posts that locked the drop-down door in place and made it impossible for anyone or anything to batter their way inside.
Terry had stocked the blood room with boxes of canned goods and cases upon cases of bottled water he had borrowed—well, looted—from the businesses in town. If he needed to hide away from the creatures for any amount of time, he and Bruce at least wouldn’t starve.
As he worked, he continually wondered if he was acting a fool. Why not flee the quarantine zone entirely? Take Bruce and the Jeep and get the hell out of Dodge? As far as he knew, he was one of the very few who had not left already. Since Terry had seen only a handful of people in weeks, most or all of the Spangle residents must have either deserted the town and surrounding affected area, or else the creatures had already had them for dinner and Terry was one of the last ones standing.
A depressing thought.
Giving a soft whistle, he called Bruce to his side, and taking up his old shotgun from where it stood by the front door, Terry left the cabin in search of game. He was sick of Spam and canned tuna, and he craved fresher meat. Rabbit, maybe, or a nice young squirrel. His back was sore from working with the heavy steel posts, and a walk in the woods would do him good. Bruce was looking a little pudgy around the middle, so a nice walk wouldn’t hurt him either.
About a mile back in the woods was a small meadow where, in the summer, wild blackberries grew. Bobby used to gather them when they visited the cabin and serve the berries up with cream and sugar, since they were a little sour on their own. They had laughed like hyenas once when Terry tried to bake a blackberry cobbler and mucked it up so badly that even Bruce wouldn’t eat it. And Bruce would eat anything.
Terry smiled now, thinking back on that day. When his memory began to edge toward another day—the day in front of the roadside store when Bobby’s life was lost—Terry steeled his heart and pushed the memory away. He was becoming such a master of burying memories he didn’t want to think about, he almost succeeded.
Almost.
He stepped from the trees onto the blackberry meadow now. Looking up, he stumbled to a stop so quickly that Bruce walked into the back of his foot. The day before, Terry had set a wire snare along a small game trail that wound its way across the meadow, hoping to bag a rabbit for tonight’s dinner.
He allowed himself a brief glance skyward to make sure there were no creatures winging across the heavens, not that he should draw their attention even if there were, since so far he had managed to survive the day with all his blood on the inside. Satisfied he was safe, he let his eyes fall back to the snare. It was not only empty, but the peg had been pulled from the ground, and the whole contraption tossed into the weeds at the side of the trail.
Bending low, Terry examined a torn-up patch of earth with uprooted clumps of grass and mud clods scattered around where a rabbit had clearly tried to escape the wire. There were fluffs of gray fur still wafting about and specks of blood here and there on the grass stems. But the rabbit was gone.
Terry stood, scratching his chin while Bruce sniffed around the crime scene looking befuddled. The pug sniffed up a puff of rabbit fur and sneezed when it clung to his nose. Terry smiled down at him; then his eyes wandered back to the snare where it lay coiled at the side of the trail. It had rained a couple of days earlier and the ground was soft. Terry bent low and studied the torn-up patch of earth, trying to find something that would identify the culprit who stole his dinner. A fox, maybe. Or a wild dog. Even a mountain lion might have done it, he supposed, but that was the biggest predator he could think of since there weren’t any bears on this mountain.
He walked a grid like they did on the cop shows, angling back and forth across the ground, searching for footprints. Since his mind was focused on trying to find a small print, he didn’t see the big one until he almost passed it by. When the truth hit him, he whirled back around and practically jumped out of his shoes.
What the fuck?
The print was human.
Terry stared at the pattern of a hiking boot in the soft dirt. He could plainly see the design of the shoe’s sole etched into the mud. He placed his foot next to the print, thinking it might be his own. It wasn’t. It was smaller by a couple of sizes. He lifted his foot and studied the sole of his own hiking boot to compare its tread with the one on the ground. That didn’t match either. So no way in hell had he made the footprint.
Which meant Terry wasn’t as alone on this mountain as he’d thought he was.
It took him a minute to decide how he felt about that. He supposed it wasn’t altogether a bad thing. The creatures were the enemy, not his fellow humans. Of course, this particular human had a nasty habit of stealing snared bunny rabbits, but maybe the guy was starving, so Terry was willing to cut him a little slack for swiping his dinner.
Still, Terry had been on the mountain for months and hadn’t seen a soul. By now even the town of Spangle appeared to be mostly deserted. So what was someone doing here so close to Terry’s cabin? Did he work for the government, maybe? That was assuming the government was trying to solve the problem at all, which Terry had seen no sign of. The only thing the authorities had done was seal off the area and leave the creatures in charge. Containment seemed to be their major goal, not extermination. And wouldn’t Terry Jones love to know which asshole came up with that boneheaded plan?
But putting all these considerations aside, at the moment Terry was more concerned with the immediate problem of having his dinner hijacked.
A movement from Bruce caught his attention. The pug was sitting in the grass, nose high, snuffling into the breeze. When Terry lifted his own nose and sniffed the air, he thought he detected a whiff of woodsmoke. And buried in the whiff of woodsmoke, was the tantalizing aroma of cooked rabbit.
His rabbit, no doubt.
“Nervy bastard!” Terry hissed and took off through the trees at the edge of the glade where he thought the scents were originating from. He wove his way through the underbrush with Bruce panting and snorting along behind him in an effort to keep up on his stubby little legs. The deeper Terry got into the trees, the stronger the smell grew, and after a while, a haze of gray smoke became visible on the air.
The moment he spotted the smoke, he also glimpsed a splash of orange between the trees. Like a hunter’s vest. Moving slower now, more carefully, Terry crept closer. He eased a few low-hanging branches quietly out of his way until he had a clear view of the area ahead.
The splash of orange was a hunter’s vest, all right. Tucked inside the hunter’s vest was a tall, slim man with a mop of dark hair. He was sitting on the edge of a boulder watching Terry’s dinner brown on a spit over a well-laid campfire. Behind the man stood a green tent with a camp chair parked in front of it. Beside the chair lay a backpack, a couple of books scattered around, and—most incongruously, Terry thought—an old portable typewriter with a page of white paper fluttering up from the carriage, rattling in the wind. Since everybody used computers these days, Terry hadn’t seen a portable typewriter in ages.
All this was most interesting, but Terry’s eyes kept going back to his stolen rabbit, which was smelling pretty damn good at the moment.
He cleared his throat and announced grandly, “That’s my rabbit you’re cooking!”
If he had been trying to startle the man, he couldn’t have been more successful. The poor guy was so surprised he almost fell backward off his rock. He scrambled to his feet and whirled to face his accuser. The moment he did, it was all Terry could do not to suck in a startled breath of oxygen.
The guy was gorgeous!
Apparently, Bruce thought so too. Without waiting for permission, the pug slipped between Terry’s legs and made a mad rush toward the stranger. His little tail was a blur, his tongue was hanging out, and the grin on his doggie face, which pugs g
et when they’re excited, was pretty much unmistakable.
The stranger cast an apologetic glance in Terry’s direction, then folded up his long legs and knelt down on the ground, arms out to accept the dog’s hello. But Bruce wasn’t there to say hello. He passed the stranger right by and headed straight for the rabbit on the spit.
The man looked so surprised at being so thoroughly snubbed, Terry had to bite back a laugh. When the stranger lifted his eyes to see Terry grinning at him, the stranger smiled too. Heaving himself off the ground, he strode forward on those long legs with his hand out in front of him, preparing to shake as if determined not to be snubbed a second time.
“Jonas James,” he said, in a mellow baritone that made the hair on the back of Terry’s neck stand on end. Later Terry would try to analyze whether he got a chill because it was the first human voice he had heard in months or because this particular human voice was just so damned sexy.
“Terry Jones,” Terry stammered. “And that really is my rabbit, you know.”
Jonas James was courteous enough to look guilty. He stepped forward the last few feet and grasped Terry’s hand, pumping it up and down whether Terry wanted him to or not.
“In that case,” Jonas said, “maybe I can invite you to share dinner with me. I do believe your rabbit’s about done.”
Terry hooked a chin toward the fire. “That’s assuming my dog doesn’t claim it first.”
Jonas looked where he was pointing and jumped like he’d been stuck with a pin. Rushing forward, he snatched the rabbit away from Bruce’s outstretched fangs, and waved the stick with the rabbit impaled on it back and forth to cool it off before tossing it on the camp chair by the tent.
“Hot,” he growled, blowing his fingers.
Charmed in spite of himself, Terry tried his best not to look it. “You know, this isn’t the safest place in the world to be right now. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on my mountain?”
Jonas James pooched up his lips and took a stab at glowering as if he didn’t appreciate the tone. “First off, I already told you my name.”
“Yes,” Terry interrupted, “but who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get past the quarantine barrier?”
Jonas stood upright, tense as a post, as if deciding whether to answer or not. Finally, he allowed his obvious dislike at being cross-examined to wilt a bit from his face. Still, he didn’t look ready to explain himself quite yet. “What makes you say it’s your mountain? Do you own it?”
Terry hedged and tried not to shuffle his feet. “Well, no. I don’t own it. Well, not all of it anyway. I do own a cabin and an acre of land back that way about a mile through the trees.”
Jonas stuck his fists in his hips. “So it’s not your mountain, then.”
“Well, not technically but—”
“So you have no right to demand why I’m here at all.”
“No, I suppose I don’t, but—”
“Why haven’t you evacuated?” Jonas asked. “Are you here to study the creatures?”
“No!” Terry snapped. “I live here! And just because everyone else has left, it doesn’t mean I’m required to do the same.” He paused long enough to blink. “Why? Is that why you’re here? To study the creatures?”
It was Jonas James’s turn to shuffle his feet. “Well, not exactly to study them. No.”
“Then back to my original question,” Terry snarled. “Who are you and why are you here?” Jonas’s eyes slid toward the camp chair. His eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
“Where the hell’s our dinner?” Jonas demanded. “And where’s your dog?”
Terry spun around and stared at the empty camp chair. There was nothing on it but a little blob of grease and an empty wooden spit. The rotisseried bunny—and Bruce—were gone.
Terry heaved a dramatic sigh. “Well, now it looks like I owe you dinner.” And a moment later, he added with a guilty frown, “I hope you like Spam.”
Chapter Seven
JONAS JAMES stared at the man who had accused him of trespassing and decided he liked him anyway. It hadn’t taken long to arrive at that decision either. Something about the redheaded giant with the full crimson beard and green eyes appealed to him. The man’s slim hips, exquisitely muscled arms covered with a pelt of very appealing ginger hair, and a pair of shoulders that went on for days and days didn’t annoy Jonas much either. And oh, how he’d always loved redheads.
“You should be wearing more clothes,” Terry observed, eyeing him up and down.
Jonas molded his face into a vaudevillian scowl. “See, now. I hate it when a handsome man tells me that.” He chuckled under his breath, amused when Terry Jones blushed.
“I was being serious,” Terry grumbled.
“So was I,” Jonas shot back, only half kidding. Then he relented. “But you’re right. The next time I go into town, I’ll try to find a leather jacket and heavy gloves. Maybe a motorcycle helmet to protect my head.”
“Good idea!” Terry exclaimed, as if the idea of a helmet had not occurred to him before. “We’ll both get a helmet. There’s a Suzuki dealership on the outskirts of town. I’ll drive us there.”
“Do you pay for stuff or just steal whatever you want?”
Terry shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as requisitioning for the common cause.”
“Good enough. Requisitioning it is,” Jonas stated happily, slurping down another slice of Spam. He couldn’t make a sandwich because there wasn’t any bread.
Jonas was sitting at his new acquaintance’s kitchen table. Along with the Spam, they were dining on canned spaghetti. A gourmet meal it wasn’t. The man’s pug, Bruce, was curled up on a blanket in the corner, snoring away and belching occasionally, having already consumed Jonas’s intended dinner. Fresh rabbit. While Jonas ate the canned Spam, he studied the patchwork of galvanized fence posts attached to the cabin’s walls. They didn’t fully enclose the structure, but Terry had clearly been working on it. Tools, boxes of nails, big metal staples, and stacks of fence posts lay scattered all over the floor.
“Why don’t you simply find a brick building to live in?” Jonas asked. “I’m pretty sure the creatures can’t burrow through brick.”
Terry eyed him with pity, as if wondering how anyone could be so stupid. “Because a brick building wouldn’t be home, would it? This cabin is my home. If I’m going to make a last stand, it’ll be from here.”
The cabin seemed to be one large room on the ground floor with a staircase leading up to a loft above and another staircase under a trapdoor, currently open, leading to a cellar below. Trying not to appear to be snooping, he glanced around at the framed photos cluttering every surface. He took in all the homey touches. Bedraggled doggie toys scattered everywhere. A dog bed by the fireplace that looked rarely slept in. Books overflowing bookshelves under the reinforced living room window. A half-empty bottle of scotch with a shot glass beside it sitting on an end table by a recliner.
Jonas’s gaze traveled back to the framed photographs. Snapshots of Terry Jones and a good-looking guy who was well represented in most, if not all, the other photos. Usually arm in arm with Terry.
“You two were… close?” Jonas quietly asked.
Terry clearly didn’t have to turn around to see what Jonas was staring at. “If you must know, yes. The creatures took him three months ago. On the day we left Spangle to take up residence here, as a matter of fact. I made it. Bobby didn’t. So much for being close.”
Jonas sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Terry glanced at him from under hooded eyelids. A spark of fire flared up in his eyes and just as quickly faded out. “Finish your dinner,” Terry said more kindly. “It’s actually good to see another face. Not sure why I’m being so defensive. Especially after my dog ate your dinner.”
Jonas smiled. “The dinner I stole from you.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that.”
They shared a glance. Terry finally relaxed a bit, and Jonas was glad to see it. He knew they had
gotten off on the wrong foot, what with him stealing the guy’s rabbit and everything, and Jonas was diligently trying to correct that first impression.
“This canned spaghetti isn’t half-bad,” he ventured.
“It sucks,” Terry answered.
“Well, yeah,” Jonas agreed, and they shared their second friendly glance.
Terry cleared his throat after wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and setting his fork aside. “All kidding aside. Why are you here? Why are you on this mountain?”
Jonas set his own spoon aside and leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “I’m a writer. Sometimes a freelance reporter. I’m here to learn what I can about the creatures and possibly write a book about them.”
Terry appeared unimpressed. “Would you like me to tell you everything I know about the creatures?”
Jonas leaned closer, all ears. “Certainly. Tell me.”
“They eat people,” Terry said quietly, and immediately fell silent.
Jonas blinked. “That’s it?”
Terry shrugged. “Once they smell your blood, you’ve got maybe five seconds tops to get your affairs in order. That’s pretty much all you need to know, don’t you think?”
Jonas dropped back in his chair. “Yeah, I suppose it is. Not quite enough to fill up a book, though. Where do they live?”
“I don’t know. In a cave somewhere, I suppose. There are a few caves scattered around. Some are little more than holes in the rock. Others go on forever. This mountain was formed by volcanic eruptions more than a million years ago. Thus the caverns.”
“So. The creatures are like bats, then,” Jonas said.
“Yes and no. Mostly no. The true bats around here are gentle animals. And the indigenous bat species only come out between dusk and dawn to eat insects. These creatures are far bigger and scarier than bats. They hunt and feed in packs. And they hunt whenever the hell they want, day or night. And more to the point, it’s not bugs they chase down. It’s humans. They move so swiftly you don’t even see them coming. They home in on the scent of blood, and wherever they do live, it must be close, because they can reach you in moments. There is no fighting them. Once you’ve drawn their attention, you’re as good as dead. They swoop down and tear into you like buzz saws.”
