Hard Landing

by Ophelia Sexton

  "Oh, great," groaned Carl. "Are you saying that our chainsaws and cubies of water are better at jumping than we are?"

  "Taking the Fifth on that one, Howler." Thor laughed. Then, his tone businesslike again, he said, "Okay, here are the GPS coordinates for the jump spot, in case you need them…"

  He reeled off the coordinates and signed off with a reminder for Carl to check in again when he reached the jump spot and met up with Lopez, who was the jumper-in-charge and the incident commander for this fire.

  Now for the fun part: shifting while injured. Yay.

  But Carl knew he faced at least a five-mile hike, if not more, up and over that ridge and then down a steep slope to the riverside jump point. His injury left him no choice about going four-footed.

  He removed his boots and gingerly stripped out of his torn, bloodstained pants, shirt, and underwear.

  Damn. My leg looks worse than I thought.

  Then he inventoried his PG bag. It was a sturdy day pack that contained his hard hat and leather work gloves as well as first aid supplies, a raincoat and waterproof leggings, a roll of plastic orange flagging, a change of underwear and socks, a sweatshirt, a canteen, a signal mirror, insect repellent, a notebook with a pen, a Swiss Army knife, a toothbrush, a mini-tube of toothpaste, smartphone, wallet, and an e-reader in a shock-resistant protective case.

  Carl looked at his leg again, disgusted and disappointed at his bad luck. Not a chance in hell that I'll be fighting this fire. In fact, I'll be lucky if Steve doesn't call a helitack crew to airlift me out.

  At least that made choosing what to leave behind pretty easy. He made room in his PG bag by removing the roll of flagging, his hard hat, and work gloves, and he added his radio, clothes, and boots.

  Then, naked, he cached his gear in the tree, as high up as he could reach, and used a length of the orange plastic flagging to mark the tree.

  He tried to get his current GPS coordinates on his phone but wasn't surprised when he couldn't get a signal.

  Hopefully, it'll be easy enough to spot a big-ass tree draped with a parachute canopy when I come back for my gear.

  Now it was time for the fun part, if by fun you meant "really fucking painful."

  Shapeshifters usually tried to avoid shifting while injured, but Carl didn’t have a choice right now, not if he wanted to walk out of here in his present condition.

  He slipped his arms through his PG bag's adjustable shoulder straps and let his wolf rise to the surface.

  The change rolled over him quickly, beginning with a sensation like thousands of stinging ants attacking him. It just got worse from there, with the usual discomfort of shifting amplified a thousandfold as the injured muscle and torn skin in his leg tried unsuccessfully to reform.

  By the time the shift completed, Carl was shaking and whimpering softly between pants.

  He rose on four paws—well, three paws—from the spongy layer of fallen leaves and spruce needles of the forest floor, glad that no one was around to hear him as he fought to control his reaction to the waves of agony still pounding through him.

  Carl inhaled deeply, and the world sprang to vivid life around him, filled with a spectrum of scents and sounds unavailable to his dulled senses when he was in human shape.

  He dipped his head between his forelegs and tightened the straps of his PG bag with his teeth, making sure that it was fastened as tightly as possible. Having been designed for his human shape rather than his beast shape, it sat awkwardly balanced on his back, but at least it wasn't going to slide off any moment.

  Then, hobbling on three legs, the bag bumping his shoulder blades and wobbling annoyingly from side to side, Carl headed uphill. He followed the scents of deer and elk to a game trail that seemed to head in the general direction of the jump point.

  As he limped up the trail, the surge of adrenaline that had helped him extract himself from the tree faded, leaving him sick and shaky. His rear left leg throbbed with deep, aching pulses supplemented by shocking stabs of agony whenever he accidentally put weight on it.

  Carl's world shrank to the effort of putting one paw in front of the other. He even stopped caring whether this trail was actually leading in the right direction.

  In the back of his mind, he realized that his body was going into shock, but he was determined to keep going. He had to join up with his team. It wasn't going to do him any good to keel over here.

  He summoned every ounce of stubbornness and continued to hobble grimly along until the trees began to thin out.

  Afterwards, he was never sure of how long that nightmarish hike lasted.

  At some point, he emerged into a meadow dotted with yellow, white, and purple wildflowers. His first inkling of trouble was a mixture of scents that reminded him strongly of visiting the Anchorage Zoo as a kid.

  A plaintive Baaaa made the pieces fell into place. Goats!

  They looked different than the goats he was used to, being extremely shaggy with long locks of white or beige hair that fell to their knobby knees, plus sharp-looking spiraling horns, but their scent was unmistakable.

  They were also wearing jackets made from big, dark green blankets.

  Livestock wearing clothes? I must have hit my head, because this has to be some kind of hallucination.

  Focused on staying on his feet, he almost bumped into the source of the other mystifying scent: that of a dark brown creature with thick wool like a sheep but with a giraffe-like neck and large, long-lashed eyes under a comical mop of tousled wool.

  Carl came to a startled halt. He gazed up at the beast. Is that…a llama? Wearing a blanket? Am I hallucinating?

  The llama looked equally surprised to see him. It stared back at him with those large rectangular-pupiled eyes and recoiled, looking like a shaggy, disgruntled Muppet.

  Then it began to bugle, a shrill shrieking sound that drove like spikes into Carl's sensitive lupine ears.

  The sound was quickly picked up by three more llamas gathered on the other side of the meadow. The goats milled around uneasily, adding their plaintive bleating to the general cacophony.

  Carl's thoughts were as slow as cold molasses from the shock and pain from his injury as he worked through the implications of this unexpected encounter.

  He recalled that llamas were used as pack animals by some backcountry hiking companies.

  Llamas and goats were livestock. That meant people. And a ranch house nearby where I can ask for help.

  He'd barely managed to reach that thought when the llama charged him with another angry screech. It spat at him and lashed out in a vicious kick.

  Startled, Carl dodged back. He accidentally put his weight squarely on his injured leg. An involuntary yelp tore from his throat as pain lanced through his punctured thigh.

  The llama bleated again, this time with a note of triumph, and bore down on him again.

  Canine barking and growling rose somewhere ahead of him.

  You've got to be fucking kidding me. How can this day possibly get worse?

  He snarled and growled at the long-necked monster, baring all of his teeth in an attempt to get it to back off.

  Movement in his peripheral vision alerted him to a new arrival.

  He turned just in time to see a woman emerge from the treeline.

  She came to a halt, swiftly unshouldered a rifle, and took aim.

  Carl had just enough time to think Oh shit before she shot him.

  Pain exploded in his head, and everything went dark.

  Chapter 3

  Naked and Afraid

  Michelle Hernandez was having a really bad day.

  Stewing, she strode through the section of the San Juan National Forest that abutted her ranch, a rifle slung over her shoulder and Biscuit and Cookie, her two tan-and-black Anatolian shepherd mixes, trotting at her heels.

  As she followed a faint trail of hoofprints, nibbled vegetation, and black beads of fresh goat poop, her ears strained for any telltale bleating.

  Overnight, something had broke
n through the fencing around her pasture again. It was the third time in as many months.

  Her flock of Pashmina goats, along with their four guardian alpacas, had made a break for it and were currently wandering somewhere in this forest.

  And her younger brother Roberto, who lived in the ranch hand's cabin, swore he hadn't heard a thing. She had left him with the job of repairing the flattened fence line while she located and retrieved her missing livestock.

  She urgently needed to find her animals before nightfall. After dark, they would be easy prey for bobcats, cougars, bears, and coyotes.

  This was Michelle's second year on the ranch, and she loved the smart, sassy creatures in her flock. Losing any of them would hit her hard, and not just financially.

  I can't keep losing livestock, not when the future of my ranch depends on me selling my next crop of goat kids and a decent amount of premium cashmere and alpaca wools.

  Her brother Roberto, who went by "Beto," frequently told her she was crazy for using her share of the inheritance that her beloved abuela Consuelo had left her to buy this small mountain ranch amidst the rugged, spectacular scenery of the Southern Rockies.

  At least Michelle had done her homework and invested the money in land and the kind of livestock that thrived in harsh, high-altitude conditions.

  Which was more than she suspected Beto would do when the time came for him to receive his share. She sometimes wondered if he would spend it all on a flashy new car or waste it on his loser friends back in Littleton.

  Not my business, she reminded herself, pushing a branch out of the way. He's a grown-up now. And I have more important things to think about right now. Like, what keeps knocking over my fences.

  Dennis Dooley, who owned the neighboring Dooley Ranch, thought that a bear must be doing it. He was a third-generation cattle rancher and had lived in this area all his life, so he probably knew what he was talking about.

  And there were all kinds of predators roaming the national forest next door—mountain lions, black bears, bobcats, and coyotes, not to mention the much rarer grizzlies, wolverines, and lynx.

  But Michelle couldn't help wondering. Especially since Dennis had phoned her yesterday, asking her to keep him in mind if she was ever interested in selling her property.

  Sure, the broken fences were always the ones on the north side of her property, in the lush pasture that abutted the San Juan National Forest. But wouldn't she have at least found some actual sign of bears, like paw prints or poop?

  And why would a bear want to break into my pastures anyway? If it was looking for food, there weren't any buildings or even berry bushes on that part of her ranch. It was the wrong time of year for vulnerable goat kids or baby alpacas, too.

  Besides, she might be a city girl, but she was pretty sure that black bears didn't generally hunt full-grown sheep and goats. In her limited experience, they tended to be scavengers who scrounged meals out of unattended coolers and trash cans, not predators who slaughtered livestock.

  I should probably phone Parks and Wildlife and tell them I have a nuisance bear. But before I get an innocent bear killed, I need some proof.

  The trail was getting steeper, and her calves and hamstrings began to burn with exertion. Biscuit and Cookie trotted briskly ahead of her, stopping frequently to sniff at bushes and clumps of dried grass.

  Michelle sighed as she continued to plod grimly along. She had a good idea now where to find her goats and the alpacas that did double duty as the flock's guard animals. There was a meadow another half-mile uphill with something the goats seemed to find irresistibly delicious.

  Alpacas, which were smaller cousins of llamas and extremely hardy, hated coyotes and foxes. Plus, their thick, soft fleeces produced wool that was both water-repellent and hypoallergenic. If any small or mid-sized predator was dumb enough to approach her goats, her alpacas would attack and try to trample the predator. If predators had any survival instincts, they got the heck out of Dodge before being trampled to death.

  Michelle was willing to believe that her alpacas might even be able to scare black bears into turning tail.

  Is that what's been happening? But if the alpacas managed to scare off a local bear after it broke down my fence to attack my goats, then why would it come back and do it again a week later? Bears aren't dumb. It doesn’t make sense.

  About ten yards ahead of her on the narrow trail, Cookie and Biscuit suddenly froze, sniffing the air. They looked at each other and rushed forward, growling and barking.

  A moment later, Michelle heard one of her alpacas bleating a high-pitched alarm call.

  She ignored the burning in her legs and ran after her dogs, panting in the thin air, her rifle bouncing and banging against her hip and butt.

  Her heart pounded with more than just the physical effort. Was it a mountain lion or bear, or even a pack of coyotes threatening her goats and alpacas this time? She'd faced threats from all three kinds of predators over the past couple of years.

  Another few hundred yards, and she emerged from the trees into a sunlit meadow with tall, lush grass and an abundance of late-blooming wildflowers. The nights had started to grow cold, but summer still hung on with a succession of warm sunny days and afternoon thunderstorms.

  Speaking of which… A gust of wind tugged at Michelle's shoulder-length hair, whipping dark strands into her eyes. She glanced up at the sky and saw a mass of towering clouds shaded dark gray at their bases moving in.

  This time of year, lightning strikes started fires in the forest on a regular basis. In fact, a couple of hours ago, she'd seen a plume of smoke rising from the forested slopes of a nearby mountain, uncomfortably close to her ranch.

  A short time later, she'd heard the reassuring roar of tanker planes passing overhead and the wup-wup-wup of distant helicopters. That meant that the Forest Service guys apparently knew about the fire and were fighting it.

  A flash of bright blue caught her eye as she stumbled to a halt at the edge of the meadow, the breath rasping in her throat.

  Her first thought was, Damn, that's a huge coyote!

  And it was menacing her stud alpaca, Alfred, as Cookie and Biscuit ran circles around the pair, barking frantically. Alfred's huge dark eyes were wide with fear under the soft brown puff of fleece that topped his head.

  It was much larger than the other coyotes she'd seen, with shorter legs and a heavier build. Its fur was a mixture of golden tan and dark gray over the top of its head and down the shaggy neck and back. Its muzzle and throat were covered in snowy white fur.

  That's no coyote. The realization sent an icy needle shooting down her spine, raising gooseflesh on her back and arms.

  It was a wolf, tangled up in what looked like a hiker's day pack.

  Michelle gaped at it for a long moment. She couldn't believe her eyes.

  The last Colorado wolf had been exterminated at the end of World War Two.

  But this huge creature couldn't be anything but a wolf.

  Alfred lashed out with a foreleg, trying to kick the creature. It moved faster than anything Michelle had ever seen, easily dodging the kick with a yelp.

  That's when she noticed that one of its hind legs was bloodied, the gray fur matted with rust brown, with a trickle of fresh, bright red blood forging a shining path over the older stains.

  Her hands trembled as she unslung her rifle and clicked off the safety.

  As she raised the gun to her shoulder and took aim, the wolf turned its head to look at her with gleaming golden eyes.

  It was beautiful and wild. And dangerous.

  She squeezed the trigger and shot it.

  To her astonishment, her bullet found its mark. The wolf staggered and fell over.

  Alfred sounded his alarm bleat again, and Cookie, always the braver of her two dogs, darted forward to sniff at the wolf's body.

  Michelle approached cautiously.

  Dammit, this is going to cost me a major fine, she thought, wrestling down a surge of grief for the necessity of k
illing such a magnificent animal. But I didn't have a choice.

  She only hoped that shooting a wolf in a national forest would cost her less than replacing an extremely expensive alpaca stud male.

  As she drew closer, she noticed something very strange…the wolf wasn't casually tangled up in the day pack's straps. It was actually wearing it, with the shoulder straps over each canine shoulder, and a wide woven nylon strap clipped shut around its torso.

  She blinked down at the fallen wolf and tried to decipher what she was looking at it.

  The pack was adorned with a US Forest Service patch and the word "Jensen" stenciled in black.