James Smith - The Flock

"Twenty feet? You're serious?"

"Yes, I am. I've read the reports about that one. They found it under a lady's house when her poodle started barking at something under there. A snake that big could eat a child, you know."

"Jesus." Tatum strode back to the desk and picked up the phone, then put it back down. "I guess we leave this up to you guys, then? Endangered or threatened species, right?"

"Actually, if it's an escaped large constrictor, we don't want it roaming free. It's a non-native species and not officially welcome here. But, yes, I'd like to take a look around, and we can recommend a specialist to trap it if we decide that's what the problem is."

"Well, that's a relief." The smile returned to Tatum's face. "So. When can you get started?"

Walks Backward laid his head in the cool shadows, sighed. The Scarlet had gone rogue and the rest of the Flock was in danger because of it.

Nearby, Egg Mother and Egg Father murmured to the young brood, telling the great stories of their ancestors. He raised his head a small distance and peered toward them. They were so well concealed that even he could not spot them. Quickly, though, he looked back the way they had come, the direction in which he lay, the way he always did, as was his task.

It was also his task to worry. For years he had worried about the Scarlet. It was not good that its coat was so different from the others. They lived in concealment and in safety because they could blend so well with the land in which they roamed. But not the Scarlet. His coloring did not allow him to vanish so completely as the rest of the Flock. But he had been born directly of the Egg Mother, and so it was not the place of Walks Backward to eliminate the threat by eating the Scarlet while he was still a hatchling. Not his place to act, only to worry.

But now the Scarlet was grown. And how he had grown. The Scarlet was much larger than any other member of the Flock. Larger even than Egg Father, heavier even than Walks Backward himself, who was heavier than all the others. Until now.

The Scarlet was not right, did not do things as they were to be done. In times past, this one should have made his move to take his place as foremost of the Flock. He should have learned to lead and to hide and to hunt, and to take a mate and be a father. But he did none of these things.

Instead, he had left the Flock, coming back only from time to time to stand and watch them from a distance. Walks Backward had spotted him a number of times, so easy to see, that ridiculous red mark revealed against the forest and field. Walks Backward suspected that the rogue was plotting to try to cull some of the females from the Flock, to form a new group. This would not do. There was not room here for two Flocks: they all, each of them, knew this fact.

The Man had left them this one place to live. Whether by design or by accident, none among them knew. But it was theirs, almost untouched for the life spans of two pairs of Egg Fathers. The humans sometimes had ventured in, and once, when Walks Backward had been a hatchling, the Flock had killed and eaten humans. But that was the only time they had met, Flock and Man. Man was everywhere beyond this place; in packs too numerous to comprehend. The Flock could not make a practice of competing with Man. This was common knowledge taught to the youngest hatchling. Everyone obeyed this rule and so the Flock bedded down in the Sun, hid well; only at night did they emerge to run and to hunt. This was the way things were supposed to be.

Except for the Scarlet. The rogue among them. He no longer acknowledged the first rules that had meant life for the Flock when so many in their stories became only that: stories. The rogue among them endangered all, and they were at a loss for a solution.

Walks Backward knew what should be done. The Scarlet should be hunted down, at night, and killed. It was the only way, but it was not his place to decide such. The Egg Father and Egg Mother only could decide an act of that magnitude. He sighed again and raised his head from the ground and peered, seeing with a perfect sight still strong after so much time. He was older than any other member of the Flock. He could recall things that were now only stories memorized in the songs of the others. But he had lived them. He had been so small when the men had attacked the nests, when the Flock had been forced to defend itself by tracking the men and killing them all. The Flock had had a most wise leader, then. One who had never made an error in judgment such as that made by this Egg Father. He trilled a note of discontent, and the hatchlings' lesson was interrupted. Without checking, he knew that Egg Father and Mother were looking his way, although he doubted they could find him.

He sighed again and peered out at the forest that had sustained them. Somewhere in the trees or at the lake or perhaps even in the open grasses, the Scarlet was moving, ignoring the ancient rules that had preserved the Flock for so long. Or maybe the mad one was even scouting at the edge of the forest where Man had built its crazy home, where numbers of them had invaded and taken a prime hunting area from the Flock. He hoped not. He hoped that even the stupid rogue would not make such an error.

But he had learned that to hope did no good at all.

Being an official with Fish amp; Wildlife, Riggs had the right to cross almost any boundary, public or private. But when Tatum put out the word that Riggs had the run of the town, it made things a bit easier. He didn't have to worry about some pesky security man with a private badge asking him what he was doing poking around a pump house or a sub-station.

He had spent that first day just driving around Salutations, getting the lay of the land. He had a knack for remembering something the first time he saw it, recalling locations and making the transition from map to the real thing, and back. In college he had almost always won the orienteering competitions he'd entered. Ronny-on-the-spot, they had called him.

Before getting the nod at the office for this assignment, Ron hadn't given this area much thought. He'd read the newspaper concerning the legal battle being waged between competing camps, each armed with their own lawyers trying to fight off the other. But now that he'd had a chance to look at the place, he could fully understand why so many people were willing to go to the mat for this land.

Except for the road leading in to what had been the Edmunds Military Base, the 400,000 acres here was one of the largest roadless areas in the state. It was probably only second to the Everglades National Park in that respect. As military bases went, the construction had been minimal. Most of the area had been used as a bombing range, and even since the 60s, most of the bombing had been done either with dummy ordnance or had merely been bombing runs with no real armaments used. The U.S. Armed Forces had inadvertently created a vast wilderness area.

Of course the wilderness aspect of the former base was now what was in contention among the varied parties. When it had been decommissioned and evacuated, the land had gone on the public auction block. The Berg Brothers group had stepped in and had snapped up the area that had been housing and ops for the base. Since it had already been inhabited, there was no need for environmental impact statements, and they had begun almost immediately with construction of Salutations, to quite a bit of fanfare. Ron had to admit that they had done a wonderful job in building their ideal fantasy town. There were already over five hundred families living there, and more houses were under construction.

The studio boys had even managed to lock down first refusal rights on an additional 50,000 acres, pending environmental impact statements. And that was when the proverbial shit had hit the fan.