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

“This ain’t working,” I said.

“It’s early yet,” Tyson replied.

“We ain’t seen so much as a coyote in the last hour,” I argued. “We’re making too much damn noise. Ain’t nothing going to come near us on these things.”

“Shit.” Ty nodded his agreement. “I was a little bit afraid that might be the case.”

“But you couldn’t stand the thought of being left out,” I finished the thought for him.

I reckon he was glad it was dark so I couldn’t see him blush. I didn’t blame Ty, though. We weren’t the kind of men who sat at home and made plans or watched the computer screen. We were meant to be out here, in the middle of the shit, and anybody who didn’t believe that had no place being a Hunter. “Alright, so now what?” I asked.

“Well, my ideas ain’t worked out so good so far, so I don’t reckon I know.”

“Well, I ain’t an expert in desert hunting, so even though this was a shitshow, I reckon I’ll still take any ideas you got,” I said.

He didn’t have time to tell me any ideas he might have because just then I heard another coyote scream. This one sounded closer than the one last night, and it only took me a second to get the general direction locked in. I thumped Tyson on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go!”

He looked at me, rubbed his shoulder a little bit, and cranked his four-wheeler. We headed in the direction the howl had come from, and this time we had wheels. We crested a rocky dune and looked down into another small depression, where this chimichanga obviously liked to do its hunting. There was an orange spray of blood painting the ground in my night vision, but two bright red shapes still circled each other in the bottom of the ditch.

“Lights,” I said, stripping off my goggles and flipping on the spotlights mounted to my handlebars. The xenon lamps cut through the dark like lasers, illuminating a battered coyote dancing and jumping around something that I couldn’t quite identify. It was black and orange striped, about five feet tall at the shoulder, and about ten feet long, with a thick tail and a stubby head. It moved fast as lightning on its four stubby legs, and the coyote kept getting nipped when it went in to try and snap at the thing.

“Son of a bitch,” I heard Ty murmur behind me. He had the high-powered LED floodlight out of the case and up on its stand, shining down into the depression like a miniature blue sun.

“What the hell is that, Ty?” I asked.

“That’s another one of them damn were-lizards that bit me, only this one’s about twice the size,” he said.

“That ain’t no were-lizard,” Skeeter said into our earpieces. “That’s a giant Gila Monster, and if it gets hold of you, it’ll chew your damn leg clean off.”

“A giant Gila Monster? Is that even a thing? Or are you just messing with me and really it’s a churro?” I asked.

“That ain’t no kind of chupacabra, Bubba. That thing looks like a Gila Monster, just five times the normal size. That means five times as venomous.”

“Wait, you mean it ain’t just a giant lizard with a shitload of teeth—it’s a poisonous giant lizard with a shitload of teeth?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Skeeter said. “Try not to get dead.”

“Always the goal,” I said. I pulled Bertha from her shoulder holster and ran down the sand to about twenty yards from the lizard. I still wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t a chalupa, but either way, it looked a lot like something that was in serious need of killing. I drew a bead on the thing and squeezed the trigger. Bertha jumped a little in my hands, and a sound like a thunderclap came from her.

The fifty-caliber slug smacked into the lizard right in the side, a little high, but I was elevated and shooting down, so I gave myself a pass on a little bit of accuracy. Truth be told, I was a wee bit excited to be shooting something I’d never put a bullet in before, so that might have made me a little jumpy, too. The bullet hit home with a solid thwack, and the lizard turned and looked at me, its baleful yellow eyes boring holes into me as if to say, “Okay, asshole, you got next.”

“Shit,” I said. “That shoulda put a hole the size of a damn pie plate in that thing.” Instead, there was a tiny trickle of blood where it looked like I broke the skin, but just barely. “Ty, did you say you killed one of these things with that Colt?”

“Yeah, but I reckon I got the runt of the litter,” Tyson hollered back. “Get clear so I can put a few into its head!” I ran around to the right to get clear of Ty’s line of fire, and he put five .308 rounds in the lizard’s head and neck within half a dozen seconds. The lizard let out a screech and decided we were way more a threat than the coyote.

It spun around, looking for the critter that hurt it, and since Ty was way back at the ATVs shooting with a rifle like a sane person, I was the first thing the super-Gila found. It scurried up the hill way faster than anything with them stubby little legs ought to run, and I emptied Bertha’s magazine at it as it came. One round caught it square in the snout, and that pissed it off enough to stop for a second and let out a bellow that sounded a lot like a dragon screwing a really upset billy goat, then it got right back after me.

I holstered Bertha and squared up like I was back at UGA getting after a quarterback. I didn’t know which way I was gonna have to juke, I just