“Maybe,” Kyle muttered.
“What’s that?” Jared shouted as he revved his engine again.
“Nuthin’.”
Kyle put his goggles back on, revved his engine and let a smile crimp his face. He popped the clutch and wheelied down the rocky slope, leaving his brother in the dust.
“WHOOP!” Jared shouted and gave chase.
* * *
Jared drifted his back tire around a massive outcropping of rocks, a boot dragging through the dirt as his engine screamed.
A dark SUV loomed dead ahead.
“SHIT!” he shouted.
He jerked the handlebars, rose out of the turn, and angled for a small mound of dirt at full speed. He popped his knees up and yanked on the handlebars as he sailed over the SUV. His back tire skidded across the roof, and then he slammed down on the far side. Grabbing a handful of brake, he came to a wrenching halt, his heart pounding.
He turned to see his brother skid around the far side of the SUV, his knee grazing the rear fender.
“You okay?” Kyle yelled.
Jared nodded with a thumb’s-up. Then he noticed the SUV. It was a gray Santa Fe, with all the windows shattered. A small, pink, stuffed kitten dangled from the rearview mirror, swaying in the breeze. A weathered Ford Focus sat parked a short distance off, but all its windows were intact.
“What the hell?” Kyle asked. “Isn’t that Cindy Wilson’s Santa Fe?”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Jared…look.” Kyle pointed past the SUV at what remained of a campsite, dread filling his voice.
Three tan tents lay flattened and slashed to pieces. The nylon of one was spattered with droplets and streaks of what could only be dried blood. Clothing and gear lay scattered across the ground.
“Jesus…” Kyle whispered. He killed his motor and laid the bike down as he climbed off. Jared followed suit, and they stepped into the campsite.
“Oh my god,” Jared kneeled down before a large patch of dried blood soaked into the dusty earth. “It looks like someone gutted an antelope.” Fear filled his voice.
“Who is Cindy dating these days?” Kyle asked worriedly as he walked around what remained of the tents.
“Ashad…something…I think.” Jared rose and lifted the flap of a tent. “You know, that big defensive back from Caineville.”
“Oh yeah. I remember him. Any idea who might have been with them?”
“No clue. I don’t recognize the Ford back there, either.”
Kyle stopped in his tracks and groaned. “There’s another big patch of blood over here. And a whole bunch of tracks headed off that way.” He pointed toward a maze of narrow, winding canyons to the west.
“Who could do something like this?” Jared asked. A wave of nausea washed over him.
“The Devil’s Dealers, maybe?” Kyle offered doubtfully.
It was the only thing he could think of. They’d crossed paths with the biker gang a few times over the years, mostly at their baseball games or a local bar afterward. The bikers, usually drunk, occasionally picked fights with people.
The Schaeffer brothers always stepped in. And it always ended badly for the bikers, assuming there weren’t more than six or seven of them. With their mother’s training as well as everything they learned from their father’s best friend, Wiley, the two brothers could hold their own against long odds.
“This isn’t their style. Not by a long shot.” Jared couldn’t figure why a low-rent biker gang would slaughter teenagers.
“We gotta tell Sheriff Picket.”
“What?” Jared asked harshly. “Tell Picket that we were out here illegally, on dirt bikes, and we just happened upon a slaughter. After he arrests us, Mom will kick the shit out of us…one at a time as she bails us out of the pokey.”
“But, Jared, we can’t just—”
“No, thank you!” Jared crossed his arms as he cut his brother off. “We call Wiley, and we sort this out ourselves. If the Dealers did this, I see no reason to let them go to jail, let alone keep breathing. Cindy is a friend. Ashad too.”
“You serious?”
“As a heart attack.” Jared stepped over to his bike. “I say we go get the four-wheeler, some gear, and our guns. We follow those tracks until we find who did this. We’ll call Wiley and he can bring in some heavy artillery, if that will make you feel better, but we’ll sort this out the way Dad would have.” Their father had died in the Middle East on some secret mission a few months before they were born. Their mother never spoke about it, but over the years, Wiley gave them enough scraps of information to know their father died a hero. “Wiley will take some convincing, but I think I can turn him around.”
* * *
“Wiley, we’ve got a problem.” Jared sounded nervous, and his brother looked even worse. If Wiley said not to go, they wouldn’t have much choice. The brothers talked about their mother kicking their asses. But she never actually had to. Wiley, on the other hand, had been a drill sergeant to them since they were old enough to do front kicks. He was hard as nails and mean as piss when the boys screwed up. And even at sixty years old, the whole town knew he was a BAMF. Wiley was the one who taught them how to think fast, shoot straight, and fight dirty. He demanded their best and was a real ballbuster any time they came up short.
“Jared?” Wiley’s graveled voice fluttered in and out across a weak cell signal. “What’s wro—?…Is Kyle oka—…”
“Kyle’s fine. We’re both fine.” Jared took a dep breath. “We found a campsite. Somebody tore it to pieces. No bodies, but lots of blood. At least a couple of them are friends of ours. And we found tracks.”
“Where are y—…?” Wiley sounded worried. Probably worried about what the boys might do next.
“Umm…” Jared started slowly. “We’re…” He gulped, finding that he was more worried about Wiley’s reaction than his mother’s. Wiley knew all about the Goblin Hills Law.
“Tell him,” Kyle urged.
“We’re in the Goblin Hills,” Jared blurted. “We think the Devil’s Dealers have stepped up their game or something. And we’re going after them.”
Silence.
Jared waited, nervous that Wiley would fly off the handle—tell them to come home that second and let the police handle it. Even a tongue-lashing from Wiley was a thing to be avoided.
Finally, Wiley said the one word Jared didn’t expect.
“Okay.” The word came through loud and clear, and there was a strange resolve in Wiley’s voice. As if something long pent up had finally been set free. “But it wasn’t the Dealers…Not out there…” Wiley’s voice broke up, thick with static.
The expression on Jared’s face was enigmatic enough for Kyle to poke him and ask, “So what’d he say?”
Jared shook his head, held up a silencing finger, and checked his signal. It was down to one flickering bar. He put the phone back to his ear “Wiley, how do you know it wasn’t the Dealers?”
“—u’re breaking up.” Wiley’s sounded urgent. “…you to hook the bikes up to the four-wheeler…—d track these fuckers like I taught y—…Arm for bear………know where you’re headed.…—ime you boys got your hands……—irthright……—eet you at the entrance.…—ait till I get there. Copy that?”
Jared did, mostly. Wiley had given them the green light. The pieces he’d picked up also meant he and Wiley thought a lot alike, which gave him a strange sense of validation.
“Most of it. Arm for bear. Follow the tracks. Wait at the entrance…” Jared wondered what the hell Wiley might be talking about. “Whatever that means,” he added quietly.
“Trust me,” Wiley added and then ended the call.
Jared rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, feeling the thickening stubble that was a relatively new concept to him. There was more going on than he understood, and Wiley’s reaction seemed peculiar.
“What fucking entrance?” Kyle’s face twisted into a knot of confusion.
“I have no idea.” Jared slid his phone beneath t
he motocross armor and into a shirt pocket. He turned and looked at the trailered dirt bikes hooked up to the four-wheeled ATV.
He opened the door of their pickup and grabbed his 7mm Browning BAR Short Trac. Quickly checking the load and the safety, he slung it over his shoulder. He pulled out his brother’s Remington 750 Woodsmaster .30-06 and handed it over. Kyle automatically checked the chamber and safety as Jared walked to the bike trailer and gave it a shove with his boot. All four five-gallon gas containers sloshed nearly full in their brackets on the trailer. The cooler, strapped in place with bungie cords, didn’t budge, and the old army footlocker with their camping and baseball gear jammed inside barely shifted from where he’d wedged it next to the cooler. They were as ready as they could be. A duffle bag with more of their supplies sat in the back seat of the ATV.
Kyle stepped up next to his brother, and the scope of what they were about to do hit them both. “This is some real shit, isn’t it,” Kyle asked. Awe, excitement, and nervousness filled his voice.
“Yeah.” Jared rubbed the back of his neck again. “You ready?”
Kyle nodded. “It’s like you said. Cindy, Ashad…they’re friends of ours.” There was a trace of scared rabbit in his words, but the resolve propping up each syllable made Jared proud. They’d been trained to handle themselves. They both knew there might be consequences, but facing down whoever took their friends, maybe even killed them…It just felt right.
“All right.” Jared looked at his brother. Lean, armed, and armored in white camo motocross gear. His own set was green camo. He couldn’t decide if they looked super cool or just plain stupid. Either way, they’d face this together…like always.
“You take the hood. You’re a better tracker than I am,” Jared said, getting into the driver’s seat of the ATV.
“Roger that.” Kyle hopped up onto the plastic hood, clutching his rifle in one hand and holding himself in place with the other. It was awkward, but it put his nose only a couple feet off the ground. “Fire it up!”
Jared eased the clutch and sent them rolling slowly over a barren patch of rock. “Don’t lose your grip,” he droned.
“Yes, Mommy!” Kyle shot back. His nervous laughter sounded hollow in his ears. Jared’s did too. They were headed for trouble, and the stakes were life and death. In the past it was all spur-of-the-moment, bare-knuckle brawling. This time they had plenty of time to think about what they were doing, and it really put a kink in their cajones.
* * *
“Christ! What is that smell?” Kyle covered his nose as they approached a nasty-looking lump of something to the side of the trail they’d followed for nearly two miles through twisting canyons.
The trail itself wasn’t hard to miss. The footprints were a mix of boots, something like moccasins, and the bare feet of a mob of tiny individuals with disturbingly long toenails. Most of the prints were smaller, but there was at least one bruiser in the mix who had to be a staggering giant. Either that or a really fat clown. The tracks looked as if Shaquille O’Neal had lead a cub scout troop on a hike to push landmarks over in the park.
“I don’t smell anyth—” Jared’s eyes got wide and he covered his nose. “Holy shit!”
As the four-wheeler approached the dark mass, Kyle realized his brother’s assessment was accurate. It was shit. Even with his mouth and nose covered, the stench pressed into him, into his face, into his skin. It clawed at him like hell’s version of every beer-shit and bloated roadside corpse he’d ever got a whiff of. Part of him wanted to cover his eyes as they rolled by, but the seventeen-year-old boy in him couldn’t tear his eyes away.
And then he saw it. Amidst the black mass of what had to be the nastiest pile of shit he’d ever seen, he saw something that chilled his blood.
“Jared…” Kyle called out nervously over the motor. “I don’t think these are bikers…”
“Yeah?” Jared eyeballed the turd from behind the steering wheel as they rolled by. Jared wanted to believe it had to be the Dealers, but his brother’s tone sounded like a terrified chummer insisting on a bigger boat. “Well, who then?” was all he could manage.
“Dude! I don’t know, but it sure as hell isn’t bikers!”
“How can you be so sure?”
Kyle rolled on his side and locked eyes with his brother. “The Dealers don’t eat people.”
Jared’s face froze with shock. “What?”
“There was a fingernail back there, man,” Kyle cut in. “Pink. Perfect…Except for the bite taken out of it.”
Jared’s mouth dropped open. All Kyle could do was nod his head slowly, eyes wide.
“What the fuck?” Jared whispered. The whole thing seemed unreal.
“You sure you want do this?” Kyle asked, clutching his rifle a bit nervously. “I mean, I’m not sure I wanna get eaten today, man.” Kyle was the thoughtful one, looking to the long-term consequences. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that if they got their asses kicked, they were next on the menu.
Jared stopped the ATV, cocked his head, and thought about it. His eyes darted back and forth as he pictured Cindy and Ashad and whoever else might still be alive. He and his brother had always protected the other kids. From kindergarten through high school. Every place on earth has people who think it’s okay to prey on the weak. And the Schaeffer brothers stepped up time and time again, taking their beatings but dishing it out twice as hard. It was what their mother had taught them—what Wiley had beaten into them—as if the brothers were carbon steel in a crucible.
He turned his gaze to Kyle and held it there. “It doesn’t change a goddamn thing.” At least two of his friends may already be dead, maybe more. “These sons of bitches must pay, Kyle.” He looked at his brother, searching for the same resolve he felt within himself. “You know?”
Slowly, Kyle nodded his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re right.” He sniffed once hard, tightened his jaw, and rolled over onto the hood of the ATV. “Let’s get this party started,” he called over his shoulder.
Jared hit the gas. They rolled down the canyon as fast as they could and still track whatever it was they hunted. And it was a hunt.
* * *
They rolled around a tight corner, and Kyle held up a closed fist. Jared hit the brakes. The ATV kicked up gravel and small dust clouds that drifted by them.
They’d reached a dead-end arroyo filled with jagged rocks scattered and stacked up in big piles along the canyon floor. Most of the Goblin Hills were weathered sandstone, but this area held a fair amount of hard-angled rubble, much of it darker than the surrounding landscape.
It looked as if someone had dug an immense hole in the ground nearby and dumped the tailings straight into the canyon. But there was no hole, only a dead end with high canyon walls.
The big cluster of the odd footprints ended right up against a canyon wall. And there was that smell again…somewhere nearby…but neither brother was interested in finding it.
Jared cut the engine, grabbed his rifle, and stood up in the seat, poking through the roll cage. Clutching his own rifle, Kyle rolled off the hood, came up in a crouch to get a closer look at the footprints.
They were the same ones they’d been tracking. Rising slowly, he paced around the pattern, looking for any sign of a mass exodus. As he drew closer to the back of the dead end, the stench grew stronger, so he knew where the shit had to be. But if anything, the tracks thinned out in that direction. Kyle made two full circles, an increasingly puzzled look on his face. He finally stopped in front of the ATV and shrugged.
“They came in here,” he said flatly, “and they didn’t leave.”
Jared scanned every inch of the canyon walls above them, looking for any way a mob of cannibalistic cub scouts and a giant, man-eating troop leader could have escaped.
There were declivities and protrusions, even a large, dark opening about twenty-five feet off the ground a short distance further along the canyon wall, but the tracks didn’t
go there.
“Well, shit, what are we supposed to do now?” Jared wanted to shoot something. Or punch something. Or kick it. Anything would be better than sitting around wondering what they should do next. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how Wiley could find them in the middle of the Goblin Hills.
Kyle sat on the hood and rubbed the peach fuzz on his jaw thoughtfully. “Well, what would Wiley do?”
Jared’s answer was immediate: “He’d look at the evidence and follow where it leads.” He couldn’t keep sarcasm from creeping into his words. “You know that. And we did that. It led us here.” He waved his hands at the barren sandstone walls and shook his head.
“Right,” Kyle continued, undaunted. “So, what evidence do we have?”
Jared sighed. “Near as I can tell, just the tracks.”
“And where do they lead?”
“To a dead end.”
“Exactly” Kyle said with a smile.
“What?” Jared’s thought process derailed like a commuter train in a kaiju movie.
“The tracks led us here and don’t lead anyplace else. The people we’re after aren’t here, so it can’t be a dead end. There must be another way out.”
“Riiiight,” Jared droned. “So, what? There’s a secret door around here somewhere.”
“I don’t know.” Kyle got down on his hands and knees. “Let’s find out.” Placing his nose practically in the dirt, he moved toward the canyon wall and examined the tracks, looking for the big set. He figured the owner might just be in charge, and if so, he might be the one to keep the group moving.
Jared crossed his arms. “Come on, Kyle. That’s just stupid. Secret doors don’t exist.”
Picking through the footprints, Kyle finally found the big footprints layered on top of all the little ones. The big set walked straight in and…Jared peered at a small rock on the canyon floor, set up against the wall. The rock was rounded and protruded from the sandy earth around it by about three inches.
Kyle made out a clear imprint of the big boot around where the rock stuck up, as if the boot had pressed into the ground without the rock being there. He reached out and pressed the stone. The thing gave slightly under his pressure. He stood slowly and motioned for his brother to step over.
The Monster Hunter Files - eARC Page 21
