K Stewart - A Shot in the Dark

At that point, I hadn’t asked Marty to make my armor yet, so it was just me and my sword, and balls the size of boulders. I really thought I was hot shit.

Will had been there, the first time I ever asked him for help. I didn’t expect to need it. My first challenge had gone so smoothly. My second one… did not. If he hadn’t been there afterward to duct tape my guts in, I’d have bled out on the spot. Lucky, see?

I guess it could have been worse. I mean, I held my own for about half an hour before I realized the Yeti was just toying with me. Like a cat batting a mouse around. I imagine I had amused him greatly. Scrawny little human darting around with his big flashy sword. I’d scored a couple of hits on him, blight trickling out, but nothing big enough to take him down, nothing crippling enough to finish it. I figure he’d let me have those strikes, just to see what I was made of.

The moment he decided he was bored, it was all over. Even as huge as he was, he moved faster than anything I’d ever dreamed of. This vicious flurry of claws, flying at my face, at anything I couldn’t defend with a single blade. I clearly remembered the last feint, flowing into a block for a strike that wasn’t coming, and knowing, knowing, I’d been had.

He picked me up like a bowling ball, sinking his claws into my ribs. Some act of divine providence kept my sword in my hand, and I forced myself to open my eyes when I felt his fetid breath on my face. He sniffed at me, and obviously found me wanting. Those jaws, bristling with fangs the length of my head, opened up, and that’s when I opened his throat. I let him hold me up, feeling my own weight fracturing my ribs on his claws, and slashed the big furry neck almost to the spine.

I was covered in blight, freezing and numb, and I remembered hitting the ground. At that point, I didn’t really care. It was warm there, lying in a pool of my own blood, and the stars were very bright that night. I remembered being vaguely annoyed at Will for blocking my view at one point. And then I didn’t know anything until weeks later, when I woke up in some ICU with more tubes and monitors than NASA.

You can understand why I wasn’t anxious to use that particular strategy again. Not like it was an option. The Yeti would never let me get that close again, never pause to gloat. He was going to rip me into tiny Jesse kibbles and that would be the end of that.

The scars down my ribs itched too, again more a product of my mind than any actual physical cause. There were details about that long-ago fight I was pretty sure I had wrong, things I’d blocked out, or forgotten or whatever. But what my waking mind couldn’t remember, my sleeping mind did. I’d dreamt of the Yeti ever since, and every single time, he killed me with little to no effort.

Contemplation of my own impending doom got me as far as Denver, where I was forced to stop for fuel and something that vaguely resembled a cheeseburger. By the time I got the big truck full, I’d promised myself that I’d find something else to think about for the remainder of the trip, even if I had to resort to singing show tunes. Luckily, I found a radio station that played classic rock, turned it up to a level even I could hear with my damaged eardrums, and I was on the road again.

Another hour saw me in Manitou Springs, ready to crush Cole’s phone into tiny electron particles. Yes, I understand that GPS systems are only as good as the data that’s been entered into them, but when it kept telling me that Viljo lived in a Taco Shack, I was pretty sure it was wrong. I mean, it would be brilliant, not having to leave the house for food and such (if Taco Shack counted as food, which was debatable), but I didn’t think even Viljo was that much of a shut-in.

Finally, in frustration, I rolled the window down and asked the next person I saw walking along.

“Oh, you want Old Backlick Road. That’s up toward the Peak.” The man pointed in the direction of the looming mountain in question. “You go up the highway a piece, take a left at the Git-n-Go, go a couple a miles. You’ll see a blinking yellow light-keep going straight. Then you’ll come to a T in the road. Hang a right, go about five miles, and you’ll see the sign. If it hasn’t fallen down again.”

Of course. Old Backlick Road. How silly of me. Lives were at stake, and the GPS wanted to quibble about the age of the freakin’ road.

What my very helpful guide neglected to tell me was that the blacktop ran out shortly after the isolated, possibly abandoned gas station. Keep in mind that I was no stranger to gravel roads-Missouri has plenty, and not far from my house-but I was driving a monster of a strange vehicle, and these particular roads had ruts that made the Grand Canyon envious. Five minutes in, and I was sure that every vertebra in my back was pulverized, and my teeth clacked together as I jounced over the road so hard that I saw stars.

Luckily, the sign for “Old” Backlick Road-which still said just BACKLICK ROAD, I might add. And what the hell kind of name is that??-had not fallen down, and with some deductive reasoning (I guessed), I took a right and headed out into what is officially known as “the boonies.”

It took me another half an hour to find what I hoped was Viljo’s place. The double-wide trailer sat off the main road (and I use the word “main” loosely) quite a ways, and the path that passed for a driveway was so overgrown, it might as well have been nonexistent. The only reason I even realized it was there was the mailbox at the corner, and the pile of FedEx boxes sitting under it. Surely, they’d be delivering out here only if someone was around to pick up the packages.

The Suburban rattled down the treelined trail until I found a very large, very angry-looking plywood penguin pointing an intimidating flipper at me. The sign around its neck said TRESPASSERS WILL BE REFORMATTED. Okay, I admit, I have no idea what the penguin had to do with anything other than being flat-out bizarre, but the menacing sign was definitely a computer reference, so I assumed I had the right place.

The double-wide trailer I found at the end of the trail could have been anyone’s trailer, really, except for the numerous phone and power lines running in through the top of it. Lines that I really should have noticed, coming off the road. Proof that humans, as a species, seldom think to look up.

I turned the diesel engine off and sat in silence for a few moments, waiting to see if anyone was going to come investigate. Truthfully, despite my rural upbringing, overly rustic places like this always make me listen warily for banjo music on the wind. The last thing I needed was to get out and find myself looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

There had been a halfhearted attempt to mow what passed for a lawn, maybe two months ago. The lawn-mower sat where it had been abandoned, tiny tendrils of vines climbing their way up the handle in slow-acting revenge.

The trailer itself was some nondescript shade of weatherworn gray. Could have been blue, in a previous life. The windows on one end of the house trailer were boarded over. The rest were heavily curtained. I watched them, to see the telltale twitch of someone watching me, but there was nothing.

I eased out of the truck, holy paintball marker in one hand, and shut the door softly behind me. In the trees around, I could hear birds chirping, and the breeze was a decidedly chilly but perfectly mundane source of my goose bumps. It took me a few moments to realize that the low throb I heard wasn’t my heartbeat, but the deep bass of some loud music, emanating from within. A piercing wail, muffled but audible, escaped through the insulated windows. Bjork. Gotta be.

I had to smirk to myself. Definitely the right place.