Lindsay Buroker - Torrent

Temi had finished her omelet and pushed the plate away. “All right, now I get what your business does, but I don’t get why you were up on the mountainside hunting monsters.”

“Monsters? Is that what the newspaper is saying?”

“The television news. A boy from the White Spar campground was filmed saying monsters had eaten his parents.”

“Oh, man, I can’t believe the reporters pestered that poor kid,” I said.

“The police and reporters are calling it a bear attack, but the survivors they interviewed all said that what they glimpsed wasn’t any bear. Someone said it had to be the same creature that killed all those people in L.A.”

I nodded, having caught up with the news from over there now. Neither Simon nor I was the type to watch much television or spend a lot of time perusing headlines on the web, so we’d missed the excitement. The first mauled body had appeared at El Matador Beach outside of L.A. ten days earlier. There’d been several more deaths in the city, with each cluster of attacks occurring farther east, until the last two had shown up in San Bernardino. After that, things had quieted down, until five days ago when there’d been two more groups of slayings near La Paz County Park. In all of the cases, nobody had managed to get a picture of the culprit, because it always attacked at night. The official reports had blamed bears, though some of the deaths had been as grisly as the decapitated man in that mine shaft. Our tunnel incident seemed to be the only killing that hadn’t happened at night, though a dark mine probably didn’t qualify as a daylight attack.

“As for what we were doing up there hunting monsters… we weren’t. We were looking for some more valuable mining goodies. We heard a scream ahead of us, checked it out, and found the dead guy.” I wondered if I should confess to fleeing the mine, certain something was about to leap out of the dark and eat us. Nah, it was bad enough Simon had already witnessed me being treed by my imagination.

“You heard screams and you checked it out ?” Temi asked. “Isn’t that how all those pretty girls get killed in horror movies?”

“I’m not that pretty, so I didn’t think that paradigm would apply to me.”

Temi didn’t call me stupid-in fact, all she said was, “Hm”-but the notion seemed to hang in the air.

“We thought it was some fellow explorer who’d managed to fall and hurt himself. Which I suppose technically happened. You do tend to fall after your head has been ripped off.”

Temi frowned. “Is joking really appropriate here?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not, but searching for sarcastic things to say is a great way to avoid thinking too much about the horror of what actually happened. That leads to weeping, hysterics, and group hugs. I find all of those activities counterproductive.” I’d never been good at sharing my emotions with others. I wasn’t sure if it came from having a pile of older brothers who’d teased and tormented me as a kid, or if it was some genetic quirk. The rest of the family went the other way-my older sister had a knack for sharing emotions with theatric intensity… and volume. Me? I’d always found sarcasm and jokes safer things to share. People have a hard time seeing through them and can’t pick on you effectively if you don’t have obvious buttons to push.

“So it was luck that you stumbled across the monster,” Temi mused, “and luck that brought it to your camp last night.”

“As far as I know.” Since Simon had ridiculed me for thinking we had something that might be drawing the creature, I didn’t bring up the theory again. It seemed even more unlikely now that I knew the whatever-it-was had come from out of state. Surely we didn’t have anything that intriguing in the back of the van.

“Where do the Harley riders come in?”

“They were at both spots too. And both times, they showed up after the creature had killed someone.” I felt silly saying creature over and over, but I didn’t know what else to call this mystery being. It wasn’t a bear, no matter what the newspapers said, and I wasn’t ready to add jibtab to my daily vocabulary yet. I’d filled Simon in on Eleriss and our strange conversation, but using such terms would draw confused looks from the general population.

“What is the plan now?” Temi asked.

“I’ve been instructed by the police to avoid monster hunting. It’s also been suggested by multiple parties that I might want to get out of town. Or out of state.” I thought of Eleriss’s proclamation that Alaska would be a suitable destination. I wish I remembered more of that conversation. He’d said something about finding “that which can destroy” the creature. Some super powerful tool or weapon? Located in Prescott? That seemed about as likely as a week passing without our van needing one repair or another, but it wouldn’t take much to convince me to run off into the woods after some unique relic from a bygone era.

“Will you heed either of those suggestions?” Temi had known me at a time when I would have ignored any advice to stay out of trouble, but I’d grown up since then, at least a little.

“Believe it or not, I probably will. I’m insanely curious about those riders and their strange language, but we need to focus on our business and on activities that pay the bills. You know, grownup stuff.”

“Wise.”

To Temi’s credit, she didn’t sound shocked or disappointed by my choice. I guess she’d grown up a little too.

My phone flashed a text message alert. Simon.

Van is fixed. Ready to roll? I have an idea.

I must have frowned because Temi asked, “What is it?” in a concerned tone of voice.

I showed her the message.

“An idea? What does that mean?” she asked.

“Nothing related to grownup stuff, I bet.”

Simon ordered a burger from the bored man cleaning glasses at the bar-business still hadn’t picked up-then veered over to join us. He dragged over another chair, and I pushed my laptop to the side. We could have moved to a bigger table, but he didn’t suggest leaving the sacred outlet. Also, he’d been bouncing from foot-to-foot while he placed his order, so I knew he was impatient to share his news. He gave Temi a nervous glance though, apparently remembering his shyness around girls now that we weren’t busy chasing motorcycles.

“What’s your idea?” I asked him. “And how much will it cost?”

“Nothing.” He focused on me and grinned. “It’s already been implemented.”

“Irrevocably?”

Somehow Simon managed to shoot me a dirty look without losing the grin. “No. Do you remember those collars I made for your uncle this summer?”

“The GPS tracking collars for his hunting dogs? I mostly remember you cussing out Taos because you couldn’t find a decent electronics store.”

“Yes, I made that app and a few trial devices before I had two that were sturdy enough to stay on a pointer hurling itself around in the brush. I still have those prototypes in the van, or had rather.”

I glanced at Temi and lowered my voice. “You didn’t… put the collars on someone, did you?” I imagined some homeless fellow sleeping on a bench under a newspaper with a dog chain around his neck before it occurred to me to wonder why Simon wanted to track someone anyway.

“No, of course not. But I took the trackers off and taped them on something.”

“On what?” Temi asked, her chin propped in one hand. She seemed to find this admission of clandestine detective work amusing rather than alarming. If she started working with us, she’d learn better soon enough.

“It’s more of an in really.”