James Axler - Forbidden Trespass

“Yet,” J.B. said. It was becoming a theme for the evening. “But she’ll get around to coming and hunting for us, and that’s a triple lock for sure.”

“She in all probability will not come alone,” Doc said. “She showed herself to be quite persuasive, in her vengeful wrath.”

For a moment they sat in silence. A bat fluttered just outside the mouth of their cave, chasing the insects drawn by the firelight. A distant screech-owl trilled mournfully. The night smelled of moist earth and cooling, sun-warmed rock, along with the more acrid smoke of their fire.

“Then we should find evidence to clear ourselves!”

Everybody turned and looked at Ricky. His brown eyes were wide. His round cheeks showed a decidedly red flush on top of their usual olive color.

“S-sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean—”

“Kid,” J.B. said, “haven’t you learned by now, that if we let you run with us, we let you speak your mind?”

“When there’s mind involved,” Mildred said, “and it’s not just a matter of words popping into your head and rolling right out your mouth.” She liked the youth, well enough. He was a solid companion, a surprisingly good fighter and painfully smart. But he was still working on developing any damn sense , in her view.

“Ease off,” Ryan said without heat. “Clearly you got something in mind, Ricky. So let’s hear it.”

“We know we’re not guilty, and it’s a fair bet these albino creatures are what killed Blinda,” Ricky said. “After all, what she described seeing, that made her think of Jak—that looks just like what we saw.”

“What little of them we saw,” J.B. added. “But true enough.”

“So we need to find evidence it was them who did it, and not us! And then this Wymie will shift her hate off us and onto them.”

“People don’t always let go of that kind of anger easy,” Ryan said. “Even when there is evidence. Anyway, what evidence did you have in mind?”

“Well, we chill one, and take in the corpse. That’ll show them. And I bet even Wymie will admit these things are more likely to have murdered her little sister than we are.”

“Right you are, lad!” Doc exclaimed.

“But there’s a problem,” J.B. said. “We know we hit one of the things back at the dig. Chilled one, mebbe. Mebbe even more, but we found nothing but the blood trails.”

Ricky shrugged. “Maybe there’s other evidence we could find.”

“Or mebbe we could do a better job chilling one and keeping hold of it,” Ryan said. “Rather do that than cut stick and run, on balance.”

Krysty smiled. After a beat, Mildred joined her. Her friend knew her man well. You could tell Ryan had just made up his mind—if you knew the signs to look for.

The others knew them, too. “So we do us some hunting, too,” J.B. said. He tipped his fedora back on his head a few degrees. His thin lips quirked slightly at the corners.

That was his equivalent of Ryan’s wolf grin. He loved the prospect of a hunt as much as any of them. As long as there was action to take he was well satisfied, so long as it was meaningful, with a proper chance of payoff.

“The only question is, how?” Doc asked. “If they manage to elude even our master tracker, Jak.”

“Try again.” They heard the albino’s soft voice from right over their heads, perched on a ledge above the cave. “Catch next time.”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said, but he was nodding, acknowledging the possibility. “They’re good. They know the country. But they make mistakes, double sure.”

“And they don’t know Jak,” Mildred said.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Krysty asked. “I mean—what are those things?”

“That one local yokel thought werewolves,” Mildred replied.

“We have seen werewolves,” Doc said. “It is just as well young Ricky didn’t choose to share that fact with that distraught young woman. It might quite have swayed the case against us.”

“He wasn’t with us when we were down in Haven, Doc,” J.B. said gently.

“Ah. So he was not. My apologies. Time…my time is all out of joint, it appears…”

“Still good,” Ryan said. “But I’m not willing to jump that far quite yet. The baron and his lady down there were special cases.”

“Muties?” Ricky suggested.

“Albinos not—” Jak began, with quiet heat.

“We know, Jak,” Ryan said. “Albinos aren’t muties. But we also know some muties are albino.”

“We lack sufficient facts to speculate,” Doc said.

“Speculation doesn’t load many magazines,” Ryan agreed. “What interests me is, you shoot these things, they holler and bleed. Meaning also, you shoot them enough, they die.”

“So you want to stay here, in the Pennyrile,” Krysty said carefully, making sure her wishful thinking wasn’t making her read more into Ryan’s words than he meant to put in them, “and look for evidence even Wymie will have to accept.”

“Go hunting,” J.B. stated.

“Bull’s-eye,” Ryan said. “Fact is, it’s not like there’s anywhere really safe in Deathlands. Shy of the grave.”

“That crazy chick in the gaudy was right about one thing,” Mildred said. “They don’t call these Deathlands for nothing.”

“Got a plan, Ryan?” J.B. asked.

“Go scout around. Keep our eyes skinned. We know they hang out around the dig site, so we can inspect the area around it triple close. Better than we did this afternoon. See if we can cut sign on a second pass.”

“And if we don’t?”

Ryan shrugged again. “Widen the search, I reckon. There doesn’t seem much point in continuing with the scavvy operation until we figure out who these hoodoos are and how to keep them off our necks anyway, the way I see it. We can head off the local folks from doing anything rash, so we won’t have to ventilate a power of them.”

“Now?” Mildred asked. She yawned. It wasn’t an attempt to back up her question—not consciously. She was that beat.

It had been a long, hard day before they’d had to face down wild murder accusations and a potential lynch mob.

“Mildred, the way our asses are dragging, we’d be in double-deep shit if we ran into any of the shadowy bastards. If Jak couldn’t follow their tracks in the daylight, we bastard sure aren’t turning up anything now.”

He straightened and stretched.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“What a mess,” Mathus Conn said, shaking his head.

The ruins of the Berdone house still smoldered, drooling dirty brown smoke into a mostly cloudless blue morning sky. The sweetish smell of overcooked meat spoiled the freshness of a new day’s air. It even overpowered the stink of still-burning wood.

“You didn’t expect it to be pretty, did you?” his cousin and chief lieutenant, Nancy, said.

He grunted and rubbed his chin. “Just funny how it always turns out worse than you expect.”

“I always hear tell of how your imagination makes things worse than they really are,” Tarley Gaines said. “But then the reality usually sucks harder.”

The three, along with a few of Tarley’s kinfolk and half a dozen or so well-disposed or just curious ville folk from Sinkhole, had trekked out to the Berdone location to see for themselves what could be learned from the site. It was clear that Wymie had been telling the truth.

At least so far as she knew it.

“So who set the house afire, I wonder,” Conn said.

“Don’t see as we’ll ever know for sure,” Nancy replied. “Mebbe the outlanders did it. Mebbe Wymie did it in hopes of trappin’ some of whoever chilled her family inside.”

“Speaking of which,” Tarley said. “Yo, Zedd. Find any chills in there?”