Highway to Hell (17 page)

“Not a shotweapon?”

“No, Miss Smarty-pants.” It was like Elmer Fudd's gun, with two big barrels. Dave broke it open and pulled out one of the cartridges. “These are the shells. They're filled with buckshot— actually, these have birdshot in them—and gunpowder.” He reloaded the shell, closed the gun, and held it out to me.

I brought it into position the way he'd shown with the rifle. Dave corrected me. “Don't put your face so close to this one. It's not a question of aiming so much as just pointing in the general direction.”

“Okay.”

“It's got a big kick, so hold the butt in tight. That way it'll just push you back instead of slamming into your shoulder.” I adjusted my position; strangely enough, I did feel more powerful. Not because I could blow something away, but because I could maneuver this dangerous instrument and make it do what I wanted.

“That's it,” said Dave. “You're a natural.”

“I don't think so.” I handed the weapon back to him.

“Why not?” He took the shotgun and laid it on the bench seat of the truck, then closed the door. “Because it's not politically correct?”

I climbed back onto the hood with a shrug. “I guess that's just not my kind of power.”

After the cab light had come on, my eyes needed to readjust to the darkness. Dave sat beside me, the rifle across his knees, and leaned back on his braced hands. “Isn't this more fun than getting drunk with a bunch of frat boys on South Padre Island?”

“Oh, yeah. It's a real dream.” I stared into the night and tried to concentrate on something serene and dry, like the desert. “Getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, with my bruised butt on this truck and my bladder about to pop.”

“Is that why your leg is jitterbugging? Why don't you just go?”

At first I thought he meant go home. But he nodded toward a mesquite bush and I realized he meant
go.

“What … outside?”

“No, I mean at the rest stop just over that hill. Of course outside.”

“I can wait.”

Dave took another look, all the way around us. “Nobody here but the cows, and they won't mind.”

“I'll
mind. What if there are snakes?”

He held out the gun in his hands. “Want to take the rifle?”

I shook my head. I reminded myself that I was a competent and strong woman. I'd faced down killer demons and the
cheerleading squad. Now I even knew—basically—how to fire a rifle. I had no intention of going all girly at this point, so it was a total surprise when I heard my own voice asking, “Will you check for snakes first?”

“Sure.” He was clearly the kind of guy who gets spiders out of the bathtub, like my dad did for my mom.

I fished in my backpack for a flashlight and some tissues and stuck a bottle of Purell in my pocket. Just because I'd never peed outside in my life didn't mean that I wasn't prepared.

“Don't use the flashlight,” Dave said. “It'll ruin your night vision.”

“You're the expert.” I dropped the flashlight back into my pack. We headed for the cover of the mesquite bushes, Dave with his rifle slung over his shoulder.

“So, seriously,” he asked conversationally, “how much do you think you could get for pictures of Ol' Chupy? A thousand dollars?”

“I have no idea.”

“How much for its carcass, I wonder?”

“You know, if it really is some kind of undiscovered species of animal”—which I didn't really believe anymore— “then it would be criminal to just shoot it.”

“But if it's a space alien—”

He broke off in the same instant that I noticed the ground vibrating under my feet. The rumble ran up through my legs, shaking my vitals and finally reaching my ears. Holy crap. That was the last thing I expected. “Earthquake!”

“Stampede,” Dave shouted, and shoved me toward the pickup. “Run. Get to the truck.”

“But—”

“Run!” he repeated, and unslung his weapon from his shoulder.

I stumbled toward the truck in a surge of adrenaline. The rumble grew to a roar, like a violent rainstorm pounding on a shingle roof. I glanced back once, as the cattle crested the rise to the east, a living avalanche of meat and hoof and horn, their wide eyes reflecting the moon.

The herd bore down on us, their fear flying out ahead of them like a cold ocean wave, icy on my skin. Something terrible drove them.

I fell against the pickup; Dave grabbed the back of my jeans and hoisted me up onto it. Vaulting up beside me, he faced the oncoming stampede, kneeling with his legs braced apart for stability.

“Hang on to your hat,” he said as the truck was swamped by kazillion tons of hamburger on hoof.

Calling with terrified voices, the cows flowed around the truck like a river rushing around a rock. I clung to the hood as the pickup bucked and swayed like a raft on the rapids.

“They're going around!” Dave shouted.

I must have looked as terrified as I felt, but it wasn't all my own fear. I felt caught up in the animal panic of the herd. “It isn't that. It's what's coming after them.”

The stampede roared past and wheeled to the west, the dust in their wake thickening like hot, dry fog. My head was full of the echo of their pounding hooves, the musty smell of cow, and the feel of the pickup's hood buckling under my knees. But none of my senses was as alert as my sixth, which said we weren't done yet.

Perched behind Dave on the hood of the truck, I squinted into the dark. “Do you see anything?”

He raised the rifle, nestling it into his shoulder and peering through the night scope. “Not yet. Wait for the dust to settle.”

Movement caught my eye, the slink of a predator, barely more than a swirl in the haze. I pointed over his shoulder. “There!”

He swung the weapon around and searched through the scope. “Gotcha,” he whispered in excitement. Then I felt the tension in his body change. “What the hell?”

“What?” I demanded.

“I don't believe it.” Dave sounded thunderstruck, too amazed yet for fear. “It's real. Looks just like the stories.”

A gust of wind parted the dust, and two eyes, red as stoplights, glinted out of a nightmare shadow. It was four-legged like a dog, but with a thick tail and meaty haunches like a lizard. I saw no wings, but the creature was so indistinct in the dark, it was easy for my mind to shape it into what scared me most.

“You think you can get a picture?” Dave asked.

Camera. Duh. Picture of a lifetime and I was gawking like I'd never seen an unnatural monster before.

I scrambled for my bag, which fortunately hadn't been bucked off the pickup during the stampede. “I'm going to try to take a picture without the flash. Is it moving?”

“No. Just … watching us.” The slight tremor in his voice was his first sign of apprehension. That was unnerving in an ex–army ranger type.

To hold off my own nerves, I concentrated on my
camera, tweaking the settings to accommodate the low light, worried about getting a picture before the thing ran away. Belly down on the hood of the truck, I braced my elbows to keep the camera steady in my shaking hands. Sighting parallel to Dave, I brought the red eyes into focus manually.

The whirr of the camera seemed unnaturally loud, and I realized that all the nighttime noise had disappeared. No nocturnal birds and no mosquitoes buzzing. Only Dave's breathing, almost as quick and scared as mine, and the low, steady pulse of the pump on the well.

I blinked to clear my vision, and in the span of that instant, the crimson spots vanished from the lens.

“Son of a bitch!” said Dave, lowering the gun.

No eyes and no shadow. My heart jumped against my breastbone, because as terrifying as the creature was to look at, it was much worse not being able to see it.

“Where did it go?”

“I don't know.” Dave scanned the pasture through his scope. I could sense the serious freak-out rising up in him. “It vanished. It was there, and then it just … wasn't.”

“I have a
bad
feeling about this.”

He took a deep breath, and seemed to take a firmer grip on his bravado. “It probably just dropped down behind that dune. That thing is real, and real things can't disappear into thin air.”

That was some screwy logic, but he was right in a way. Supernatural creatures have to adhere to supernatural rules; the trick is knowing what they are. If disappearing wasn't against this thing's rules, then
re
appearing might not be, either.

“We should get in the truck,” I said.

“Yeah.” Dave's distracted tone wasn't very reassuring. He climbed down from the hood, still aiming at the spot where the chupacabra had been.

“Seriously, Dave. A
really
bad feeling about this.” That was an understatement. My skin prickled with the certainty of immediate danger.

“Stay there,” he ordered, walking steadily toward the dune. “Get the shotgun out of the cab and keep it with you.”

Sure. Like I was going to stay back at the truck with the figurative womenfolk. Looping the camera strap around my neck, I slid to the fender and jumped down.

Before I even got my balance, a nightmare claw flashed out from under the truck. It wrapped around my ankle, and yanked my foot out from under me. I hit the unyielding ground and the air rushed out of my lungs, nothing left to scream with as razor-tipped talons ripped through the denim of my jeans. The thing dragged me across the ground, pulling me toward the shadows under the pickup, where red eyes gleamed in the darkness, and teeth like needles reflected the desert moon. I stared into the horrific maw of God knows what, unable to think anything except,
Wow
, I didn't see
that
coming.

I
scrabbled at the dirt with my fingers, fighting for traction, a handhold, anything to stop the relentless force pulling me under the truck. Breath knocked out of me, I struggled to grab enough air to scream as my mind spun its wheels on the fact that I was about to get eaten by
el chupacabra. El chupacabra.
That was just so wrong. My captured leg was about to disappear into the darkness; I had to do something. Bracing my free foot on the bumper, I pressed until my thigh muscles shuddered. The grip on my ankle tightened and twisted, torquing my knee while sharp claws cut through the leather of my running shoe.

The pain wrenched a cry out of me and panic snapped loose, reason kicking in. I grabbed the strap that had tightened around my neck and pulled my camera to me. The light on the flash was green. Green was good. This creature had never shown up in the daytime. Maybe those huge red eyes were the reason why.

I squeezed shut my own eyes and hit the shutter button. Crimson flashed through my lids; the chupacabra let out a piercing scream and released my foot.

“Get out of the way, Maggie!”

Dave's voice seemed to come from far away. I shoved with the foot braced against the bumper, got clear of the tire, and rolled to my left. There was a shot, another inhuman screech, then the rush of a heavy body flying past me.

Another yell, this one from Dave. I crawled to the door of the truck, hauled myself up by the handle, and yanked it open. The cab light spilled over the scene. I saw Dave pinned by something the size of a huge dog, but with dark, leathery skin and spines running down its back. The beast's tail whipped back and forth as it tried to get at Dave's throat. He deflected the snapping teeth with the rifle, and his bent knee up against the monster's belly kept the back claws from slashing open his gut.

I grabbed the shotgun from the bench seat. Five minutes of instruction didn't qualify me for this, but I couldn't give my brain time to think more than one moment ahead, or my neurons would short-circuit on the impossibility of what was happening.

Reaching onto the dashboard, I pulled on the headlights, illuminating the scene. The chupacabra reared back with a
shriek like the unoiled hinges of Hell. Hauling the shotgun in tight to my shoulder, I aimed and squeezed the trigger.

The blast tore out of the weapon, and I stumbled backward at the recoil. The shot ripped through the creature's side in a spray of dark droplets. I saw the thick hide blister and smoke. Then it was gone, moving faster than my eye could follow. If it had been a natural animal, it would have been dead, or dying. Maybe the fact that I could glimpse it at all was proof it was at least injured.

Tossing the shotgun into the cab of the truck, I hurried to Dave at a limping run. He lay on the dried grass, holding his shoulder with a bloody hand. His mouth was moving, but all I could hear was the ringing in my ears and the refrain of ohmygod, ohmygod running through my head.

“How bad is it?” I asked. His denim shirt was in tatters, covered with blood and black goo. It was hard to tell which was which. He said something I couldn't make out, but it sounded emphatic enough that maybe he wasn't about to die. “What?”

He grabbed me and shouted in my ear. “I just got attacked by a gawd-damn chupacabra. How do you think I am?”

“Bad?” I had to ask, because in between the moaning and cursing every time he moved, Dave didn't look nearly as freaked out as I was to have been grasped in the literal jaws of death.

“Are you kidding?” He grinned like a maniac. “I'm going to be a freaking millionaire!”