Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (best color ebook reader .txt) 📗

I came over a low hill, and down in a depression was a wide area giving off an orange glow, telling me it was warmer than the surrounding dirt. I didn’t see anything red, or moving, so I flipped up the goggles and clicked on the flashlight I had slung under the barrel of the shotgun.

The scene that lit up in front of me was like something out of a horror movie. The sand was churned up and turned to red mud with all the blood spilled. It looked like whatever went down out here was fast, mean, and bloody as hell. I pulled a couple of chemical light sticks out of my back pocket, snapped them, and jabbed them into the dirt. The whole area lit up with a blue-white glow, making the blood look almost black in the artificial light. I stuck the butt of the shotgun into the sand, wedging the gun upright, and took the flashlight off the barrel. I walked into the depression, playing the light over everything trying to see if there were any clues I missed.

I pulled out my phone and snapped a bunch of pictures of tufts of hair, one loose coyote leg laying half-buried in bloody sand, and some piles of blood-muddied dirt. “Skeeter?” I said.

“Yeah, what you got?”

“I’m sending you some pictures to look at. Wait, never mind. I can’t send data out here.”

“Bubba, the only reason you have cell service is because I put that portable repeater in your bag. What do you see?”

“Looks like some kind of animal attack. Shitload of blood and hair. I’d guess coyote, but I’ve only got about one leg to go by.”

“That’s disgusting,” Skeeter said.

“Yeah, I’m a little surprised there ain’t more guts and stuff laying around, though. This is a real clean kill, like whatever did this hauled the coyote off somewhere to eat.”

“Sounds smart,” Skeeter said.

“I hate hunting smart monsters,” I said.

“You hate hunting monsters that are smarter than you,” Skeeter replied.

“Yeah, ain’t that what I said? Anyway, there’s a blood trail. I’m gonna see what I can find if I follow it.”

“Don’t get lost. It gets cold out there at night.”

I didn’t get lost. I also didn’t find shit, even after traipsing around half the night in the cold-ass desert. The sun was coming up, setting the horizon ablaze by the time I trudged back to my truck. I made it back to Tyson’s house right about the time Vanessa was setting the breakfast table.

“That does not look like a Hunter coming home triumphant,” she said. “Leave your boots on the porch if you’ve got anything nasty on them.”

I didn’t think I did, but I took them off anyway. She was walking around barefoot in the kitchen, so I wasn’t sure if they were some of those folks that don’t like shoes in the house, but either way it felt good to get my poor feet out of them boots for a while.

“What do we look like when we’re triumphant?” Tyson said, limping around the corner and sitting down at the head of the table.

“Oh, sweetie, y’all are downright insufferable,” Vanessa said, sliding a plate piled high with eggs and bacon in front of him. She turned to me. “You want to get cleaned up before breakfast?”

“Yeah, I oughta at least get a quick shower. Otherwise I’m liable to put you off your feed,” I said, following her finger down the hall to the spare bedroom where she stashed my clothes. I grabbed a shower and sat down at the table ten minutes later, feeling almost human. I told them about my night while I shoveled food in my mouth, finishing up with the fact that the coyote’s leg was in the back of Tyson’s pickup.

“Seriously? You hauled a bloody coyote leg back here in my truck?” Tyson griped.

“Son, looking at that truck, I could have strapped it into the seat next to me and you wouldn’t even have noticed another stain,” I said, pushing back from the table.

Tyson gave me a sour look, but Vanessa just laughed. “He’s got you there, Ty. What’s next, Bubba?”

“Well, I’m gonna sleep most of today, I reckon. I’ll take some pictures of the leg and send them to Skeeter before I crash, then tonight I reckon I’ll go back out there with more lights and try to hunt this thing down.”

“I can take the pictures for you,” Tyson said. “You go sleep.”

“You sure?”

“Let me feel like I ain’t completely useless with this damn bum foot,” he said, lurching to his feet and clumping across the kitchen. “I’ll go get my camera.”

“Just use my phone,” I said, handing him my cell. “The camera’s good enough, and Skeeter’s got it all synced up with his computer so it transmits any picture I take straight back to him.”

“That’s useful,” Vanessa said.

“Yeah, long as I remember to turn it off when I want to take pictures of my girlfriend,” I said.

“You’re terrible,” she said with a grin.

“You ain’t wrong.” I grinned back. “But I’m also whooped. I’m gonna go sleep for a few hours, then when I get up, we can figure out the next step. Thanks for breakfast. It was awesome.” I stood up and swayed a little on my feet. Between flying halfway across the country and being up all night, I was wore slap out. I lumbered back to the spare bedroom, unbuttoned my pants, and intended to lay back on the bed for just a minute before I got undressed and crawled under the covers.

The sun had moved all the way across the sky by the time I woke up, still flat on my back with my pants and shirt on. Somebody, Vanessa I reckoned, had come in and thrown a blanket over me at some point during the day. Tyson was a nice enough fellow, but he seemed about as nurturing as a drill sergeant, so I didn’t expect it to be him. If I’d woke up with a dick