Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

all taste like shit. The house had seen better days. I couldn’t tell you when those better days were, but they weren’t any time this century. The roof was all caved in, every window in the place was busted, and the porch only had one step left where three used to be. I barely trusted the porch, much less the steps, so I just stretched a little and hopped up there to take a peek inside.

The roof was indeed laying in the house, obscuring anything that might have been left behind when it was abandoned, but this didn’t look like the kind of place anybody was cherishing any memories about. Frankly, I couldn’t see why anybody would be out here to even report on anything weird.

“Skeeter, do Tyson’s notes say what these people were doing out here in the first place?” I asked.

“One couple claimed they were stargazing and needed to get away from all the light pollution.” I looked up through the open space where the ceiling should have been, and while it was still too light out for stars, there also weren’t any streetlights anywhere in view.

“That kinda makes sense,” I said. “I can see it being darker than the inside of an elephant’s butthole in a couple hours out here.”

“That’s poetic, Bubba,” Skeeter remarked.

“I try. What about the other strangeness?”

“That was a couple of high school kids. Two boys and two girls. They didn’t say what they were doing, but I reckon you can guess.”

“Yeah, I can probably figure it out. I’m gonna poke around here for a little while, then gear up and wait for dark. Oughta only be about another two hours. Then if I’m lucky, I can see whatever they saw, shoot the shit out of it, and be on the first plane out of here tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’m gonna go watch Z Nation on Netflix and laugh my ass off. Call me if you need me.”

“Will do, brother. Will do.” I clicked off the comm and continued my poking around in the rubble. I couldn’t see anything that would make me think the place was haunted, and nothing about it looked particularly demonic, either. There were a few piles of random animal poop laying around, but nothing seemed at all supernatural. Maybe I’d get lucky and the folks just got spooked by a coyote.

Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.

It was full dark for a couple hours before anything weird happened, and I had to admit, the stars were real pretty. I was geared up as heavy as I could be and still move, with Bertha under one arm, a Mossberg pistol-grip 12-gauge on a sling over my right shoulder, a pair of silver-edged kukris strapped to my back, my Judge revolver in a paddle holster at the small of my back, and a silvered boot knife on my right leg. If it was magical, I was ready. I had silver, cold iron, and white phosphorous rounds for Bertha and the shotgun, and enough silver blades to gut anything short of a dragon.

I was dozing a little bit, playing Ray Wylie Hubbard low on my phone to set the mood. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the pickup with the windows down to make sure I could hear anything approaching, but I figured I was safer there than in the house, which looked like it was liable to collapse in on me at a stiff breeze.

A howl split the night open like a machete through a watermelon, and I fumbled around to make the music stop. I held still, but no more sound came. Opening the door, I slid out down to one knee and took cover beside the truck, drawing Bertha as I did. “Skeeter,” I whispered. “You got me?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

His voice came through my earpiece at his normal volume, enough to make me cringe in the dark silence. I knew if there was anything close enough to hear Skeeter in my ear, then I was probably already dead, but that didn’t make me any less jumpy.

“Something just howled,” I said.

“Bubba, you’re in the desert of New Mexico. I reckon there might be a coyote within a hundred miles. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something howling.”

“It didn’t sound like a coyote,” I whispered back, then the howl came again. This time it did sound like a coyote, until it cut off in a sharp yelp, followed by a series of snarls and barks, then another bunch of yips, yelps, and whines. The noise trailed off, and everything around me was silent again. “That sounded like a coyote, but it sounded like a coyote having a real bad night,” I said.

“Let me see if I can get any kind of satellite over you,” Skeeter said. A few seconds passed, then he came back. “Nothing. Sorry, Bubba. I got nothing.”

“That’s fine, Skeet. I reckon this is as good a time as any to try your new toy.” I reached back into the cab of the truck and slipped on the heat vision goggles Skeeter insisted I pack. I kinda hated the things because they screwed up what little crappy night vision I had, but if they let me find whatever just had itself a nice coyote dinner, I was happy to have them.

“Can you tell what direction the sound came from?” Skeeter asked.

“I think it came from the hills over to the west,” I said, starting in that direction. The terrain was a weird range of greens and yellows, and when I looked down at my hands, they glowed bright red. I scanned the horizon as I walked, holstering Bertha and keeping the shotgun out in front of me. With my vision shot to shit, I figured I’d need the spread the Mossberg gave me.

I walked west for a good twenty minutes, occasionally hearing some scrabbling sounds off to the left or the right of me, but whenever I looked, nothing showed up in the infrared.