Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

Trent didn’t give it a second glance. He threw open the door and raced around to the back of the truck, where he saw a big splash of blood in the spotlight’s glare, with another of the round-headed creatures twitching in the middle of it. Donna stood in the camper doorway, a look of total surprise on her face and a bloody butcher knife in her hand.

“Are you all right?” he gasped.

“I was putting it away,” she said.

“What?”

“I was making sandwiches while you were cutting brush. I thought I’d better put everything away before we started driving again, and then you shouted to close the door and I turned to do it but the… the whatever it was jumped for me and I just instinctively put my hands up and I… I got him in the throat.”

“Jesus. I guess you did.” She was breathing hard, and she held the knife as if it might turn on her next. He looked out into the circle of light around the truck. He didn’t see any of the creatures, but he didn’t expect they would stay spooked for long. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”

She turned away and tossed the knife into an open drawer, slid the drawer shut, and grabbed the two ham sandwiches sitting on the countertop. “All right.”

Trent covered her with the gun while she climbed up into the cab, then slammed the camper door and went around to climb up on the driver’s side. When he had slammed that door and rolled up the windows, he lowered the gun and leaned back in the seat. “Damn, that was a little too close,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Donna. Her eyes were wide as saucers, and her hands shook until she set them in her lap, the sandwiches still clutched in either hand.

Trent wasn’t doing much better. He slowly eased his finger off the pistol’s trigger, popped open the cylinder and ejected the two spent cases, then refilled the cylinder with fresh bullets from the glove box. He left the pistol next to the flashlight on the seat between them.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. How about you?”

“My ears are ringin’ like crazy, but other than that, I’m all right.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. We got people to rescue.”

“The blind leading the blind,” Trent said, but he released the brake and accelerated up the hill.

He stopped at the top and pointed out where he’d seen the parachute go down. It was right below Orion, which was way low on the horizon here, and tilted on its left side. “We just aim for the belt and we’re bound to run across ’em,” he said.

“The belt?” Donna said. “What about that bright light on the horizon next to Betelgeuse?”

Trent didn’t know Betelgeuse from apple juice, but he saw the light she meant. “That looks like a star to me. There’s sky below it.”

“There’s not usually two bright stars in Orion’s right shoulder.” She got the computer out of its slot under the dash and woke it up, then stuck it up against the windshield to let the webcam get a view of the stars. She fed that image to the navigation program and clicked the pointer on the star next to the horizon, and a label popped up next to it: Sirius.

“Sirius?” She asked. “But that’s way south and east of Orion.” She pulled down a menu and got a more detailed information window. “Oh, okay. It’s only 9.6 light-years away. I guess it could move quite a ways across the sky even in a short jump to Alpha Centauri.”

Trent leaned over next to his window and looked up to Cassiopeia, where the Sun added an extra leg to its “W.” A short jump. Donna said, but it was far enough to move a couple of stars, at least. And after just being attacked by wild animals, he suddenly felt a long ways from home.

While Donna folded up the computer and put it back under the dash, he radioed Greg and told him they were on their way. “And just for future reference,” he told him, “You might think to warn people about the pack animals that run around out here at night. They weren’t in your chamber of commerce brochure.”

Greg sounded surprised. “Holy shit, did you run into a pack of hoodlums?”

“Is that what you call ’em? Big round-headed doggy things?”

“Those are hoodlums. But they’ve pretty much abandoned the woods around Bigtown. We haven’t seen any in a couple of months.”

“Well, they haven’t abandoned anything around here. Except us when we killed a couple.”

“You killed a couple? Just like that?”

Trent laughed. “We didn’t have a whole lot of choice. There must have been fifty of ’em.”

“Damn,” said Greg. “Well, I’m glad you made it through that okay. A lot of people haven’t been so lucky.”

“I bet.” Trent hung up the microphone and turned to Donna. “Remind me to suggest we just drive up to Jackson next time we decide to go somewhere.”

“They’ve got wolves up there,” she said. “They come down out of Yellowstone.”

“Shit.”

They ate their sandwiches while they drove. Trent bolted his down in about six bites and wished he had more, but he wasn’t about to stop and fix another sandwich while somebody was waiting on him for help. He kept the truck in low range even so. The spotlights lit up everything bright as day for a hundred yards around, but the shadows were inky black pools that could have hidden anything, and the last thing everybody needed was for the rescuers to get into an accident themselves.

They didn’t play any music this time, either. The only sound was from the truck itself: the soft whine of the motors and the squeaks and rattles as they jounced over the uneven ground. It seemed like they were forever detouring around some obstacle or another in their path, but Trent kept bringing them back into line with Orion whenever he could, and they slowly worked their way south.

He looked over at Donna and tried to imagine what that must have felt like when the hoodlum jumped her. Killing it with a knife! Trent had never had to fight anything or anyone with a knife and he never wanted to. That was way too personal for comfort.

She noticed him looking at her and said, “What?”

He looked away. “Nothin’,” he said automatically, but then he kicked himself for saying that. It wasn’t nothing. He cleared his throat and said, “Actually, that was… well, that was really something back there, coming around the side of the truck and seeing you with that knife in your hand. I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of them hoodlums just then.”

She laughed. “Just call me Xena. But don’t ask me to do it again.”

“Never.”

He risked another look at her. She had always been a babe, but right now she could cause a riot in a church. She was fully charged and glowing with the power. If they didn’t have to be somewhere in a hurry, he would be parking this truck and tearing her clothes off right here in the front seat, and by the look she was giving him, she felt the same way.

“I’m beginnin’ to see why some people like to get into trouble,” he said.

“Don’t you start thinking—”

“I’m just saying. Some people.”

“Okay.”

“Still, I bet you’d look mighty good in one of them pointy brass bras and a—”

She whacked him in the side. “About the time you start wearing a loincloth.”

“That ought to look good with a cowboy hat.”

She giggled. He laughed and reached out and gave her a squeeze on the leg, but the ride was too jouncy to let him keep his hand there for long.

After a couple of miles by the odometer, he saw a flash of light off in the distance. He flicked the trucks lights off and on a couple of times, and the other light did the same. He got on the radio again and said, “Somebody’s blinking a light at us. You had any more contact with them?”