Chapter 1
Friday, April 6
Andrew Tobin watched the instruments as his student executed a gradual banking turn to enter final approach to the Mid-Way Regional Airport. The Cessna 162 Skycatcher practically flew itself, so it took little of Andrew’s attention. The student, a forty-something computer technician from Dallas named Linda, was in her final hours before her solo and, like the Skycatcher, required little supervision.
“Smooth turn,” he praised almost automatically as the plane leveled out, and Linda established the proper angle of attack. He ran a hand through his sandy brown hair and continued to watch. She only nodded as they passed over U.S. Highway 287 with its busy Friday afternoon traffic, carrying commuters between Midlothian and Waxahachie. The approach from the south sometimes distracted newer pilots. Linda had herself squared away and didn’t spare it a glance. Less than a minute later, the fixed tripod landing gear settled onto the tarmac with a perfect flare, and they were taxiing to the flight center.
“That felt good,” Linda said as she applied the brakes and cut power to the Continental engine.
“Glad to hear it. A couple more cycles, and you’ll be ready to solo next week.”
Linda smiled and bantered as they did the post-flight walk around of the Cessna. She helped Andrew attach a pair of ground cords to the wings (something most students didn’t bother to do), before heading in for him to sign her log book. A couple of comments on her stick handling, a handshake, and she handed him that week’s check before leaving. He watched her go, glancing at the horizon to see a line of thunderstorms developing.
Spring in North Central Texas was often a study of contrasts. Typical warm weather battled with sudden storms that could be as violent as they were unpredictable. You never knew if you were going to get sunshine or hail. He’d grown up farther south, not far from Waco. The weather was not much different down there.
“Any more students today?” Andrew asked Tina, the flight school’s matronly office manager.
“That was the last, Andy.” He nodded and headed back to the flight lounge. He’d tried to get her to stop calling him Andy when he’d come to work six months ago. The effort was completely wasted. The other pilot instructors had explained it was Tina’s manner to give every instructor a nickname. If your name could be shortened, that was what happened. “You’re lucky she didn’t make one up for you,” explained an older teacher named Mark. She called him Buzz, and no one could tell Andrew why.
The Mid-Way flight center kept him busy, which Andrew was grateful for in many ways. The pay wasn’t bad, and the job was stable. The two adjacent towns provided a good amount of their business, and with Dallas/Ft. Worth just to the north, they always seemed to have a steady stream of prospective pilots looking to get away from the much more expensive schools of the metroplex.
Andrew dropped into one of the three worn easy-chairs in the lounge and sighed. He bent over and removed his lower left leg. The stump was covered in angry red splotches, the result of the not-quite-perfect mating of the artificial limb with his body.
“That freaks me out every time I see it,” said a voice nearby.
Andrew craned his neck to see William LeBaron sitting by the back door, drinking a Coke and reading a technical manual.
“How do you think I feel?” Andrew asked.
William grunted and nodded before turning back to his book. Andrew wasn’t offended. William was a Gulf War vet himself, with more than a thousand hours behind the stick of an A-10 Warthog. He’d picked shrapnel from his own thigh after one particularly hair-raising close air support, or CAS, mission near Baghdad, but was lucky enough to come home with all his limbs. Andrew hadn’t been that fortunate.
“They ever going to get you back in for a new fit on that thing?”
“The schedule keeps getting pushed back.”
“They’re just cooling you until your commitment is up.”
Andrew nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing. If the limb could be fit well enough, he’d be eligible to fly again. A Cessna 162 might pay the bills, but it was a piss poor substitute for an F-15. A year ago, he’d been dusting antiquated Syrian fighters two at a time. Then, after a long day of one sortie after another, he’d brought his Eagle back to the base without a scratch. As he was doing his walk around, a group of young airmen screwed up and lost control of a GBU-31 JDAM. The 1,000-pound bomb had clattered to the deck and rolled onto Andrew’s leg. The corpsman said he was lucky to be alive, but his foot and eight inches of lower leg were not as lucky. With his foot went his chance for a second bar, and probably his career as a fighter pilot.
“At least no one is shooting at me for fun anymore,” Andrew quipped.
“Careful what you wish for!”
Later, Andrew drove his aging Chevy back to his apartment in Waxahachie, long after the modest rush hour traffic was gone. The sun lit up the western horizon in one of the famous Texas sunsets that made him glad he lived there. As he parked at the apartment, some of his gratefulness faded. He’d rented the second story walkup as a compromise, figuring he’d only be there a few months while he finished his temporary detachment and healed. The job was another “compromise,” provided by a contact in his squadron. His whole damn life was becoming a series of compromises.
He climbed the two flights of stairs with a lot less pain than he’d experienced the day he’d moved in. The refrigerator yielded a slice of two-day old pizza and an ice-cold beer for dinner. Life wasn’t too bad. He flipped through a few channels of boring network sitcoms and reality TV before catching a news report. NASA in South Texas was investigating last week’s meteor storm. More than a hundred meteors had impacted the ground, and they were eagerly searching for them.
* * *
Ranger Erin Burr drove the Jeep Wrangler down the old trail with her jaw tightly locked to reduce the chance of biting off a piece of her tongue. Another ranger had done just that her first year working in Big Bend National Park; he’d hit a large rock and jarred his Jeep hard enough that he bit the tip of his tongue clean off. The story was a thing of legend, but sadly all too true. Ironically, the man still worked in the Terlingua Resort—Terlingua meaning “three tongues”—and his speech was more than a little difficult to understand.
“Isn’t there a regular road to the…site?” The last word was accented as the man’s head bounced off the fabric roof while they navigated a particularly challenging rut in the trail.
“No such thing after you get south of Boquillas Canyon,” she told the man. Her park supervisor had told her he was a NASA scientist. He looked like one in his conservative suit; a floppy hat was his only compromise to the conditions around him. His gray suit was coated in light brown trail dust, and his steel cases of instruments in the rear of the Jeep flew around like dice in a cup as the Jeep bounced down the trail. A cliff loomed off to their left as she negotiated a turn.
“Is that Mexico?” he asked, his knuckles white on the Jesus bar as the wheels got within a foot of the drop off.
Erin smiled; she’d purposely taken them close to the drop off to see his reaction. Weren’t astronauts supposed to be bad-asses? “Yep, the Rio Grande is about a thousand feet down that-a-way!”
“Shit,” he hissed silently as they got even closer.
An hour later they were just east of the river landing used by summer rafting trips, and the man was cursing nonstop as he examined his battered equipment. Several of the delicate instruments were much the worse for wear after the 20-mile excursion. “I should have gotten a helicopter,” he complained.
“Can’t land on this side of the river,” she pointed out and gestured at the overhanging pine trees. “When we get a rafter that needs evac, we have to take them off the Mexican side.”
He grunted and tried to salvage his gear. As he worked through the morning, Erin busied herself checking the trail markers and other park equipment in the area. A fellow ranger had been out here only last week, but she had nothing else to do. She hiked up the trail half a mile and inspected the emergency solar-powered radio, calling in a radio check before marking it off on a clipboard. By the time she got back to the NASA scientist, she’d worked up a good sweat.
“How much longer?” she asked as he came into view.
“A while,” he said distractedly. He had a dizzying array of devices with blinking lights, displays, and touch-screens set up on a pair of ingenious folding aluminum tables he’d had in a pack.
“I’m going to get in a swim then,” she said, “…if you don’t mind?”
“Suit yourself,” he replied.
Erin went down to the water’s edge and sloughed off her pack. It was weeks before the rafting season started, or she wouldn’t have even considered what she was about to do. In an instant, she stripped off her green park ranger jumpsuit, stepped out of it naked as the day she was born, and dipped a foot in the water.
Fifty feet away, the scientist forgot his instruments completely as he unabashedly gawked at the naked woman. The annoying professional ranger had transformed into a centerfold model before his eyes, with the muscles playing under the supple flesh of her behind as she moved her foot back and forth in the water, testing its temperature. She tossed her waist-length ponytail over her shoulder with her right arm, turning slightly so he could see her breasts in partial profile.
She smiled. No doubt he thought it was a show put on entirely for his benefit. She navigated the ancient rock landing until she was knee deep in a natural pool. Erin considered bending over and splashing some water on her torso and arms, but by the look on the man’s face, he’d probably pass out if she did, so she contented herself with squatting slightly and leaping into the chilly water. She’d always been an unapologetic flirt; her job so seldom gave her a chance to practice her art.
Erin paddled in the eddies of the pool, well outside the main channel of the Rio Grande. The occasional glance confirmed the scientist was observing much more than his devices. There was no way in hell he was going to miss her exit from the water. The finer art of flirtation often involved leaving them wanting more…much more. She hadn’t thought to bring a towel, otherwise she might have hidden it elsewhere to avoid giving him everything he wanted.
The chilly spring water chased her onto the shore. She figured she’d play it to the hilt and climbed out slowly, using her hands to wipe some of the water from her legs, belly, sides, and, of course, breasts. The chill made her nipples hard enough to scratch glass. All the while she avoided looking at him. Instead she walked the last few feet up the landing, found a rock still in the afternoon sun, and lounged on it to dry off. Was that a groan she heard? She sunned and half-napped for an hour as the man struggled with his equipment…and his libido.
With her clothes back on, she made the trip back up the trail in silence. Erin smiled mischievously and whistled a tune while the scientist scowled and mumbled to himself. She finally broke the silence. “So, did you find anything?”
“Huh? Oh, not directly. There is some elevated background radiation indicative of meteor activity…”
The rest blurred into techno babble, and Erin tuned him out as they got in the Jeep and started driving back. At least he’d forgotten about his erection that wouldn’t go away. “Look, I was wondering if you—” He suddenly stopped as she brought the Jeep to a jumping stop. “What the hell?” the scientist snapped as he narrowly avoided smashing his balding head on the windshield. She held up a hand to silence him, but he exclaimed, “I’ve had just about enough!”
“Would you shut the fuck up?” she snarled and pointed. In the path ahead was the biggest javelina she’d ever seen. It stood calmly, regarding the Jeep in a most un-javelina manner.
“Is that a pig?”
“Javelina,” she corrected. They were similar, but generally less aggressive than their wild pig cousins. This one was twice as big as any she’d ever seen, and they normally ran from the park vehicles. The porcine creature stared them down, and she felt a shiver run up her spine. Then it charged. “Oh crap,” she said and slipped the truck in reverse.
“What are you scared for?” the scientist asked. “It’s just a pig.”
“You noticed the doors?” she asked as she negotiated an uphill angled corner at 10 miles an hour. The man looked sideways at the Jeep door, apparently realizing for the first time it was nothing more than fabric stretched over a metal frame. “Oh, but it’s still just a damn pig!”
Erin realized quickly the javelina wasn’t going to give up. Rather than hitting a tree or flipping the Jeep in a ditch, she hit the brakes and slipped it back into drive. A second later the javelina was on them. She figured it would bite at the tires or something, and she’d wait until it was alongside and take off down the trail. It might be able to keep up with the SUV in reverse, but not in forward. She knew these trails pretty darned well.
The javelina sped up at the last second, and jumped. Erin gasped as it cleared the hood and crashed face first into the windshield with a sickening Whump! The glass cracked and spiderwebbed, spraying her with little flecks of broken glass. The scientist screamed in a most unmanly fashion.
The javelina’s bloody snout snapped at them, red-tinged saliva flying as it used its razor-sharp tusks to tear at the windshield. In a flash it shoved its head through the compromised safety glass. “Shit, shit, SHIT!” Erin yelped and tried to push back as she jammed the accelerator to the floor.
The Jeep’s oversized rear wheels squelched in the dry, rocky soil, and the truck leaped ahead. The javelina bit at her, clamping its jaws down on the steering wheel and wrenching at it. For a split second, Erin felt the top-heavy SUV overbalancing, and then they flipped sideways.
It was only lucky in that they’d left the cliffs behind before the encounter. The Jeep flipped three times as it went down the hill before crashing into a huge pine tree, where it came to a grinding stop.
Erin came to, dangling sideways from her lap belt as the Jeep had ended up on its right side. The javelina was inside; the windshield had come completely out of its frame. Her passenger was resting on the door, a bloody gash on his forehead, and the animal was laying across his legs. “Crazy pig,” she grumbled. Then, the javelina moved. It wasn’t dead.
Erin dangled there for a split second as the animal opened its eyes and looked around, and then she made up her mind. She grabbed the seat with her left hand and pulled herself around, the belt biting painfully into her waist as she stretched as far to the rear of the car as she could. The javelina looked up at her movement and locked eyes with her. The look made her shudder with the intent she saw there. It wasn’t the pain-mad gaze of an injured animal. It was contemplating its situation, and her.
“Damn you,” she hissed, her hand searching blindly behind her. The animal rolled and reached up, snatched her dangling ponytail, and pulled on it. “Ouch!” she screamed as it began chewing and pulling her head closer.
“Wha—?!” the scientist grumbled. The javelina released Erin’s hair and turned to see the man it was lying on. The man moved his head and was only inches from the javelina’s snout. “Oh, God!” he yelled, and the animal bit him on the nose. Part of Erin’s mind wondered why it was a dainty nip, and not a full assault with those razor sharp tusks.
As he screamed, Erin’s hand finally closed on what she was looking for. She jerked the weapon free from the paddle holster, and she brought it around just as the javelina released the scientist’s nose and turned again toward her. She smoothly stroked through the long trigger pull of the SIG Sauer P226 and fired at point blank range, the 9mm a deafening roar in the confined space of the Jeep. The round punched through the animal’s head, and it jumped, trying to reach for her again. Erin fired twice more, and after a seeming eternity, the javelina lay still.
“It bit my nose!” the scientist cried, blood pouring into his hand as he held onto his damaged face.
“Yeah,” she said, letting the gun drop next to the expired javelina as she found the seatbelt release. “But look at my hair.”
* * *
Erin tried one more time with the Jeep’s winch. After a few moments of listening to the cable make ominous popping noises, she gave up before it broke for the third time. The Jeep wasn’t moving without help.
“Any luck?” the scientist gasped between coughs. She’d since learned his name was Ken Taylor. The attack by the crazed javelina had been four hours ago. An hour after the attack, she’d managed to get Ken out of the Jeep and make him reasonably comfortable as she assessed their situation. Her radio was busted, their cell phones didn’t work on the back trails, and this early in the season it was unlikely they would encounter another human being anytime soon. When she’d set to the task of righting the Jeep, he’d looked out of sorts. Now, after a couple of hours, he looked much worse, and he wasn’t getting any better. He had a fever for sure, and he appeared to be having trouble concentrating. Night was approaching, and she didn’t like her choices.
“No,” she admitted as she sat next to him. She had bandaged his nose wound with the limited first aid kit she carried, and there was more than enough food and water, but without real medical attention, she feared he wouldn’t last. Had the javelina been rabid? She didn’t know what the symptoms of rabies were. She thought rabies made an animal act irrational, but the damned javelina had seemed to be making logical, calculated decisions. A shiver went up her spine just thinking about it.
“Damn,” Ken said as he took a sip of water from the canteen. He tried to hand it back, but she shook her head. His voice was slurred from the nose wound, but did it sound even worse now? “I don’t feel very good.”
“I know,” she said. “I think I need to hike back to the landing and use the emergency transmitter.”
“That’s a couple of miles, right?”
“Four miles, yes. It will take about two hours for me to get there and contact the ranger station.”
“Won’t they come for us if you just wait?”
“Not until tomorrow morning. Do you think you can wait that long?”
Ken looked at her for a moment, then coughed, deep and rasping. His eyes glazed over for a moment, and he looked through her. A spasm ran through his body, like a mild electrical charge, then he calmed again. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Me neither,” Erin whispered. She gathered the little daypack and tossed in a pair of water bottles and a single pack of dehydrated food. A few other essentials rounded out what she would need, and she finished by strapping on the gun belt and checking the load of her SIG Sauer. There wasn’t anything else holding her up. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t take too long,” he whispered. Erin nodded, shifted the pack on her shoulder, and headed back up the trail toward the landing.
* * *
An hour later, Ken tried to drink some of the water and eat some of the food Erin had left for him, only to vomit it up moments afterwards. His head swam with pain and confusion, and sweat poured from his forehead despite the cool evening breeze. Suddenly he stumbled to his feet, not knowing why, completely unable to concentrate. “Wha—what?” he choked, spinning around and searching for the source of the disturbance with blurred vision.
He heard something behind him, and he spun again to find only darkness. “Damn you,” he snarled and took a step in that direction, only to fall over a root in the gloom and sprawl in the dense pine needles. His mind exploded in lights, pain, and voices. Whispers and screams, thoughts and ideas he could not understand. “Stop it, stop it, stop…stop…STOP!” The last word came out as an anguished wail from the depths of his soul that echoed through the woods and down to the Rio Grande thousands of feet below. He shuddered in the brush, and the man that was Ken succumbed.
Small animals and night birds flitted around for a time, sniffing the air and trying to sense if the man had become food. But after a few minutes, it was standing again, wildly searching the darkness. It noticed the birds and scurrying creatures, and it shook its head and snarled. The snarl turned into a clipped scream, more visceral than the previous one. It turned toward a narrow goat trail that descended the cliff.
The descent would have terrified Ken and likely sent him plummeting to the rocks below. The creature that now walked in his skin, though, felt no fear and held close to the sharp rocks with single-minded, painless determination. By the time it reached the river, its hands were torn nearly to the bone in several places. It paid no mind to the blood-dripping wounds as it scanned the opposite river bank. Moonlight illuminated the far shore where it saw a group of people, all moving slowly to the west. A little moan escaped its lips, and its teeth gnashed as it jerked forward and plowed into the water.
* * * * *