“Tonight?”
“How many more goats can you afford to lose?”
Mark snorted. “I’d be happy to see the whole batch of them tossed off a cliff, but Elaine’ll have my head if I don’t put a stop to it. Besides, what if it don’t stop with the goats or the dogs? What if she’s out feeding the things, and it comes after her? Or me?”
“Exactly,” Kilgore said. He adjusted his coat and cocked his head toward the door. “Josh, you know where this farm is?”
“I do.”
“Then you’re riding with me.”
Signal Valley Farms sat in the shadow of Signal Mountain, Tennessee, and it was only a few miles away from the derelict roadhouse where Kilgore Jones had joined the party. As he drove his semi-black, beater Eldorado around the mountain, his passenger tinkered with the radio and groused about the knobs.
Josh punched the round handle and said, “You need a new one.”
“That is the new one. You think they came with cassette players in ’67?”
“You’re a real dinosaur, man.”
Kilgore smiled, but it was a grim little smile. “You said the turn’s coming up?”
“It’s right here. Right over there, I mean. Look, see? There’s a sign.”
The edge of the right headlight clipped a low-swinging sign with a picture of a goat and some purple flowers. Kilgore turned the long car slowly, and its tires chewed against the gravel. The unpaved road turned out to be a driveway, but it was a long driveway and it made a dead end at a ranch-style house with one light burning.
They parked up near the house.
Josh and Mark milled nervously while Kilgore rummaged through his trunk. He produced a battered book with a burgundy leather cover, a fistful of stakes that should have lined a garden, a pump water gun with loudly sloshing contents, a digital camera, and a pair of six shooters. Then he lifted out a small flashlight and checked its batteries.
“I told you, I shot the thing already,” Mark said.
Kilgore methodically packed a camo-green duffel bag with everything except for the guns, which he popped into the holster he wore under the trench coat. “I heard you, and I believe you. But I’m willing to bet you didn’t shoot it with bullets like these.”
“What are they, silver or something?”
“Silver-plated,” he said. “It works just as well, and I ain’t made of money. I’m not saying these’ll work or anything; hell, I don’t know what you’re up against here. But not much can stand up to this assortment. And oh yeah, this.” He reached back into the trunk and pulled out a machete as long as his arm. The light of the trunk’s half-dead bulb glinted against the shiny, sharpened edge.
Josh did a good job of appearing unimpressed, but Mark went green. “Is that a magic knife or something?”
“No magic here,” he said, then changed his mind and patted the side of the bag. A rectangular square showed in outline through the fabric. “Except my mom’s old Bible.”
“What are you, some kind of preacher or something?” Mark asked. “Is that why you do this?”
Kilgore shouldered the bag and shook his head. “Almost exactly the opposite, my friend. I do this because I’m not a preacher. Now if you’ll kindly point me at your barn, I’ll get myself to work.”
“It’s back over there. You see the roof, through the trees?”
“Yes, I do.”
“All right. There’s the barn over there, and behind it there’s a little run-off that turns into a creek when it rains. Watch out for that. It’s none too deep, but it’ll trip you up if you don’t see it.”
Mark reached out a hand and Kilgore took it and shook it. “I want to thank you,” Mark said. “I appreciate you coming out like this. Is there anything I can do to help you, or anything you need?”
“No sir. Just you and Josh here go in the house and stay there, and don’t come out—no matter what you hear. You two understand?”
“Sure do,” Josh answered for them both.
And when they were safely inside, Kilgore looked into the distant sky. He saw the outline of the barn roof, and as he began to walk toward it, he started his mental checklist. He kept his voice to a whisper. It wasn’t the world’s quietest whisper, but it wasn’t supposed to be.
If he was too quiet, nothing would hear him.
“Probably not a vampire,” he said. “It would’ve sucked the goats dry but not torn them up. Might be a demon. But usually they get other people to do the sacrificial killing. It’s not much of a birthday present if you’ve got to buy it yourself. Chupacabra, maybe?” He’d never met one, but that didn’t mean they didn’t happen. “Never heard of a goatsucker this far north.”
The barn was barely more than a sharp-shadowed shape, squatting low and square along the ground. Within it, a few odd bleats of curiosity gabbled and small hooves shuffled back and forth. The smell of straw and shit wafted from underneath the locked and barred-up door.
Kilgore held his head against it. “Everyall right in there?”
“Na-aa-aa-p,” someanswered.
And something else answered, too—from over in the gully. First it was just the sharp, out-of-place pop of a branch, and then there was another rattling, the hard clack of two rocks coming together as if they’d been stepped on.
Kilgore pulled his head away from the barn door and reached for the gun that hung under his left armpit. He was a practical man, and he saw no good reason to ramp up slowly.
Another big twig broke, and another knocking set of rocks sounded like footsteps to The Heavy. “Josh, Mark. That’d better not be you.” But the pace of the motion told him it wasn’t made by anything two-legged. There were four feet … moving at a sharp and regular clip.
He revised his guess. Not feet, perhaps. “Four … hooves?”
He listened for the firm, approaching patter. The creature was tracking around back, to the right. Kilgore tracked around to the left, keeping the barn between him and the thing that was crawling out of the gully.
The Heavy kept his eyes on the ground and his ears on the edge of the property, at the line where the creek run-off turned and flowed through a row of trees. His squint told him where to tiptoe past the building’s corner and how to miss the watering trough. His ears detected a wet snuffling sound and the hard, knocking clatter that, yes, sounded like hooves.
As Kilgore circled the barn, the thing circled too, intrigued enough to follow but not bold enough to charge.
“Here, critter-critter,” he called softly. “Come on out and get me. I’m just a slow, fat man. I’m easy pickings for a bad old thing like you, and I’m a real hearty meal. Are you hungry?”
He narrowed his eyes and peered through the night.
“Come on, now. Come out and let me get a look at you.”
Around the back of the barn there was a covered storage area that came up to Kilgore’s thigh. He put his left hand down on it and tested the wood. It might hold. It might not. But he was running out of barn and he was going to have to make a stand someplace. The platform was as good a defensive position as any.
He stopped his retreat and lifted one large leg. “Shit,” he mumbled, and he said it a couple more times as he hauled himself up. But then he stood, and the storage lid held. It didn’t want to. It bowed and creaked underneath four hundred and fifty pounds of man plus all his supplies.
Kilgore dropped the duffel bag and unzipped it, all the while trying to keep quiet so he could listen.
Around the corner, something big was tracing Kilgore’s scent trail.
The Heavy pulled out his Bible. It was way too dark to read so he stuffed it into his belt, and the book bent against the strain … but he liked feeling it close. He held up the gun and aimed it down at the corner where the inquisitive snuffling was coming up fast. Mark had been right. Its head was low to the ground.