James Smith - The Flock

His grand appearance in the lobby that evening hadn't helped though, he thought as he carefully pulled on his pants and drew on the shirt. If the scratches started leaking, he doubted anyone would notice the stains through the dark fabrics he was wearing. Tentatively, he walked around the king-sized bed, taking a couple of exaggerated steps, to test how it all felt. There was just a little irritation, nothing to worry about.

Going into the den area of the suite, he sat on the couch and looked at his laptop. He'd immediately copied the files onto a pair of disks, even the innocuous ones. Dodd didn't want to take any chances with them. They were his only proof right now, and he'd have to go with that if he couldn't find anything more concrete before he got ready to break the story. And that was another problem, he realized.

One of the first things he'd have to do when he got ready to make his move would be to resign from the Inquirer. Technically speaking, this was their baby. He was just an employee. This story, these pictures, this whole deal was theirs. He was just a lowly grunt and the articles and whatever came from them was just work for hire. He'd have to time it well, quit his post, wait at least a few days, and then put the whole thing up for auction. Maybe they'd buy their own pictures back. If they bid high enough.

Sitting there, he thought of how close he had come to activating the phone modem and faxing the files straight to the home office. Dodd had even gotten to the point of bringing up the fax program before he'd come to his senses. He ran his injured fingers through his wiry hair, thinking of the big payoff that was going to be his.

With any luck at all, soon he'd have a decent retirement account sitting in the bank, a good money market fund earning a comfortable living, a townhouse (maybe two) with an ocean view. Dodd thought of Seattle; he thought of his time there with Anne, his wife who'd left him. Hell. Maybe he could get whoever bought the pictures to throw Anne in on the deal, too. Despite everything, he still loved her. Who knew? Maybe she'd come back to him when she heard about all of this. Anything was possible, now.

Dodd sat, drying in the cool air, and he waited for room service to bring the steak and lobster dinner he'd ordered.

And a bottle of wine.

Denny Eagleburger got out of his truck and walked around to the rear. The back was a cage, thick wire mesh holding a very big dog. He could hear the Doberman's dull nails clicking and clacking on the steel floorboard every time it took a step. "Howdy, Number One Dog," he said.

The dog huffed and lunged playfully at the cage door. Number One Dog was his favorite of the bunch. This one, despite the paperwork that claimed that Berg Security owned him, was really Eagleburger's animal. He was, in actuality, what was referred to in the old days as a one-man dog. They were attached, these two. Eagleburger unlocked the pen and opened the door.

He said nothing, for they needed few words to understand one another. Eagleburger just opened the door and glanced at the ground, and the 170-pound Doberman poured out, a black, glistening arrow of oilstain fur covering a frame of pure, sculpted musclemass. As it hit the ground, it turned its pointed head on a thick neck and nuzzled the man's fingers with its moist nose. If he'd still had a tail, it would have been carried at half-mast, to tell everyone who was the master: Denny Eagleburger. Denny was leader of the pack, and Number One Dog was his first lieutenant. But, since his tail was nothing more than a surgically altered stump, he made do with dipping his head and nuzzling the master's hand. There were other ways to be understood.

"Sit," Eagleburger hissed. And the dog's haunches went down like a hundred-pound bag of stone. Number One Dog didn't make a sound as the man produced a leash and latched it to the dog's collar. There was just a solid, metallic click in the night. "Good," the man said. Dog's big tongue snaked out, but met nothing, and quickly vanished.

Eagleburger looked around, surveying the area. He had parked the truck near the substation. Tatum had given him the report, showing that the guy from the government wildlife agency had parked here. And the reporter who had been giving the company such a hard time had parked nearby also, apparently following the other man-Riggs his name was-into the forest. Both men had been driven back to their vehicles, the reporter first, and then Riggs. And this was the weird part, Tatum had told him: Dodd, the reporter, had come back with Colonel Grisham, whose ranch abutted the town, while the other guy had been driven back by that big chick who worked for Vance Holcomb. "It's all very strange," Tatum had said. He knew, from Tatum's big mouth, that the studio was worried that they might face some kind of united legal front from the folk they were struggling with. This development did not look good to their suspicious eyes.

Well, Denny Eagleburger didn't make the decisions as to what was strange and what was not. He just read the report, which had been written by his boss, and he was out here to do what Tatum had told him to do. "Look around there. Snoop. See what you can find. If Riggs thinks that snake is there, maybe you can find it. Take one of the dogs with you. Find the damned thing." So here he was, with Number One Dog.

The security guard jerked lightly on the dog's chain and began to walk toward the woods. Out here at the edge of Phase Three, there were only a few streetlights, and they were set back nearer the houses. Here, it was dark, and they had only the stars and the moon to light the way. There was a half moon, though, so the forest was not quite so obscured as one would have imagined. And under a clear sky, the moonlight was enough to reveal quite a lot of detail. Eagleburger could make out the waxy leaves of Spanish bayonet, could see clumps of oleander with bundles of flowers blooming in the night. And the tops of the pines made soft forms against the blue-black sky. The security guard liked it out here at night. The air was comfortably warm, the humidity low, and the wind was blowing softly and carrying the sound of a billion insects and ten thousand smells all blended into a great, moist scent that he'd come to identify with home. Everything seemed to be in it: the mud and the sand, the pines and oaks, the Spanish moss hanging in great masses, cattails growing in wet places. He wondered, sometimes, if the bugs, the untold tons of insects that flew and crawled and hid everywhere one looked were also a part of that heavy, earthy scent.

The two, man and dog, moved away from the truck that had brought them. For a moment they followed the road, and then they veered off, taking an almost invisible trail that led over to the asphalt path the bikers and joggers preferred. This path scribed a huge rectangle around the entire town. It hugged the backyards of the four principal planned neighborhoods, and it angled off into the woodlands that surrounded the place. And it crossed the streams that led down into swamps that then emptied out into the Kissimmee River away off in the trackless places into which Salutations was eventually going to spread. Or so the company was fond of saying. A part of Eagleburger hoped it didn't happen quite that way. He found himself hoping some of that roadless wild could be saved.

Number One Dog huffed, not quite a bark. They held up, stopping short. The Doberman was looking ahead, staring toward the trail, which lay just beyond a narrow strip of knee high wiregrass. Denny reached down and patted the big dog's muscular neck, but he said nothing, whispered no words of encouragement. None was needed. This animal had learned to know what Denny was thinking just by the way the man stood, or moved, or breathed.

Number One Dog huffed again, and the hint of a growl was there. Scratch that exhalation with the right scent, and a deep roar might emerge. One could feel it just waiting to burst forth.