That was okay. Johnny was good at looking like it was his club, his party. Quarterback, homecoming king, he was charming but with just enough of a badass attitude that nobody challenged him. Being Johnny’s friend was safer than being someone who annoyed him.
Dawson wasn’t quite sure why Johnny wanted the Taser. He didn’t need it. Johnny exuded confidence, even in those silly cowboy boots. Kids called him Johnny B and it was the coolest nickname. Dawson had even heard Mr. Bosh call out “Johnny be good” at one of the football games and then the man laughed like he expected just the opposite from his son and that it was perfectly okay with him.
The first flash of light came without a sound. Everyone turned but only briefly.
The second flash crackled overhead. Dawson thought it might be lightning but it blurred into blue and purple veins that spread over the treetops like a crack in the twilight sky.
Dawson heard “oohs” and “aahs,” and smiled to himself. They’re tripping out, enjoying the fireworks. He probably was, too.
He hadn’t used salvia before but Johnny B said it was better than anything from the family medicine cabinet and way more potent than regular weed. Johnny said it was like “rock’n’roll fireworks squeezing your brain, convincing you that you could fly.”
Dawson thought the stuff looked harmless. Green, the color of sage, with wide leaves and similar to something he’d find in his mom’s old flower beds.
God, he missed his mom.
Dawson squashed some more of the plant into a tight wad and stuck it into his mouth between his gum and cheek like chewing tobacco, no longer wincing at the bitter flavor.
Johnny had called the plant “Sally-D” and told them that the Indians used it for healing. “It’ll clear your sinuses, clean out your guts, soothe your aches, and erase the static in your brain.”
However, he also sounded this excited last week when he had them all snort the OxyContin he’d crushed into fine particles. He had been able to confiscate only two of the pills from his mom’s medicine cabinet so the effects—when crushed and spread out among a dozen kids—didn’t quite live up to Johnny’s promises. But here he was, once again, sounding like an infomercial, working his magic and getting them to give the new drug a try in the hopes of feeling good and being cool.
Less than a minute after Dawson’s second hit he felt light-headed, a pleasant mind-tickling buzz that disconnected him from the others as he watched them stumble and laugh and point at the sky. It was like he was watching from another room, in slow motion from a faraway galaxy right outside his bedroom window.
There was a deep bass rhythm pounding, pounding, pounding at the base of his skull. Tree branches started to sway. Their trunks multiplied, by twos then threes.
That’s when he saw the red eyes.
They were hidden in the bush, back behind Kyle and Trevor, right behind Amanda.
Fiery dots watched, darting back and forth.
How could the others not see this creature?
Dawson opened his mouth to warn them but no sound came out. He lifted his arm to point but he didn’t recognize his hand, yellow and green, almost fluorescent in the flashing strobe light that came out of the treetops. Waves of purple and blue crackled through the branches.
That’s when Dawson first smelled the heat. Almost like someone had left on a hot iron for too long. Then suddenly the smell was stronger, reminding him of scorched hot dogs on an open campfire—black, crispy, burned meat. Then he remembered they hadn’t brought any food.
The sensation started as a tingle. Static electricity traveled the airwaves. The others felt it, too. They weren’t “oohing” and “aahing” anymore. Instead, they stumbled, heads tilted upward, searching the treetops.
Dawson looked back at the brush for the fiery red eyes. Gone.
His head swiveled. He could hear a mechanical click in his head like his eyes had become a machine. Each blink scraped like a camera shutter. Every movement ticked and echoed in his head. His nostrils flared, sucking in air that singed his lungs. A metallic taste stuck in his throat.
The next flash of light sizzled, leaving a tail of live sparks.
This time Dawson heard shouts of surprise. Then cries of pain.
Suddenly the fiery red eyes came running out of the brush, racing straight at Dawson from across the campsite.
Dawson raised his arm, aimed the Taser, and pulled the trigger.
The creature reeled back, fell, and sprawled in the leaves, kicking up glowing stars that shot out of a bed of pine needles. Dawson didn’t wait for the creature to spring to its haunches. He turned and started running, or at least his legs did. The rest of him felt carried, shoved into the forest by a force stronger than his own feet.
It was all he could do to raise his arms and protect his face from the branches. They tore at his clothes and slashed his skin. He couldn’t see. The pounding at the base of his skull drowned out all other sound. The flashes were hot and bright behind him. In front of him, total dark.
He hit the wire hard. The jolt of electricity knocked him off his feet. He stumbled and felt his skin pierced and caught like a fish on a thousand hooks. The pain wrapped arrows around his entire body and stabbed him from every direction.
By the time Dawson Hayes hit the ground, his shirt was slick with blood.
TWO
FIVE MILES AWAY
“There’s no blood?” Special Agent Maggie O’Dell tried not to sound out of breath.
She was annoyed that she was having trouble keeping up. She was in good shape, a runner, and yet the rolling sand dunes with waves of tall grass made walking feel like treading water. It didn’t help matters that her escort was a good ten inches taller than her, his long legs accustomed to the terrain of the Nebraska Sandhills.
As if reading her mind, State Patrol Investigator Donald Fergussen slowed his pace for her to catch up with him. She thought he was being polite when he stopped, but then Maggie saw the barbed-wire fence that blocked their path. He’d been a gentleman the entire trip, annoying Maggie because she had spent the last ten years in the FBI quietly convincing her male counterparts to treat her no differently than they’d treat another man.
“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he finally answered when Maggie had almost forgotten she’d asked a question. He’d been like that on the drive from Scottsbluff, giving each question deliberate consideration then answering with genuine thought. “But yeah, no blood at the scene. None at all. It’s always that way.”
End of explanation. That had also been his pattern. Not just a man of few words but one who seemed to measure and use words like a commodity.
He waved his hand at the fence.
“Be careful. It could be hot,” he told her, pointing out a thin, almost invisible wire that ran from post to post, about six inches above the top strand of four separate barbed wires.
“Hot?”
“Ranchers sometimes add electric fencing.”
“I thought this was federal property.”
“The national forest’s been leasing to ranchers since the 1950s. It’s actually a good deal for both. Ranchers have fresh pastures and the extra income helps with reforestation. Plus grazing the land prevents grass fires.”
He said all this without conviction, simply as a matter of fact, sounding like a public service announcement. All the while he examined the wire, his eyes following it from post to post as he walked alongside it for several steps. He kept one hand out, palm facing her, warning her to wait as he checked.