THRILLDABEAST Vol. 1
THRILLDABEAST BOOK 1
CHAPTER 1
He sneaks through the wilderness, every tree a neighbor; a friend. He has names for things that don’t sound anything like the names we have for things.
He watches from behind the tree line. Confident he can do this. He’s been watching; he knows it’s time. He’s been waiting; it needs to happen now.
He takes off at full speed, has to be ready to…
STRIKE! The big rock with his left foot
SNAG! The tree vine with his right hand.
PULL! With all his might.
RELEASE! Soar like a bird!
EXTEND! EXTEND!
Now TWIST! ROLL!
“Yes!”*
(*In Bigfoot language)
A perfect, two (big-)footed landing on the back of a cruising yacht with the water skiing girl behind it. (He sees her out there every day but, she’s SO lame! No jumps! No tricks!)
M’halo grabs the ski-rope, pulls the skier in (safely) (somehow) with one tug. She FLIES through the air screaming. Catching her, he lets her down on the deck with a wide toothy grin. He grabs her water ski, studies it for a second, glances at his HUGE feet, and throws the ski over his head with a laugh. Looking left, he leans over and rips off the bench seat that Connor was sunbathing on. He grabs the rope jumps overboard and slams onto the water. SLAP!
The initial shock of being pulled off the waterski by a bigfoot would have ruined anyone else but not Sheridan.
“Drive faster Roger!!”, she yells. “Get to the dock! ROGERRR! Buffy and I only have the photographers for another hour!”
Roger pushes the throttle forward as his neck cranes backward to see if this is all actually happening.
“HANG ON!!”, he screams over the sound of the engine.
(Little do they know, that’s exactly what M’halo wants). The speedometer says 70 knots, and he’s killing it out there! Flying through the air, acrobatically landing jumps over the wake left by the boat’s massive engines that are positively ROARING!
M’halo roars even louder!
Just then, Kate, Roger’s 17-year-old little sister, comes from below decks wondering what all the ruckus is about. She emerges just in time to see a huge hairy brown…monster(?) boogie-boarding and land a jump that almost takes him over the boat! She freaks and reaches out to hold on. The boat is going so fast its almost out of control. Kate is the tomboy/athletic one of the family, and is blown away at what she’s watching. She can’t look away.
The rest of the people on deck continue to scream and yell. Buffy has finally reached harbor patrol on her cell. Sheridan can barely keep her phone straight as she tries to capture the scene for her social media account. The photographers have both lost their footing and are trying to protect their equipment from the water and the violent crashing of the yacht into the waves. Meanwhile, M’halo sees trouble up ahead as the boat is running out of real estate! There’s going to be a collision with the pier any second!
He looks left, he looks right, and he decides he needs to dismount NOW!
He has to STRIKE! This last wave….
SOAR! in the air!
EXTEND! Stretch! Stretch! Soar!
EXTEND!
(Uh-oh! this is gonna hurt!)
CRASH!
ROLL!
THUD!
He made it to the far side of the pier, but….
He’s upside down, discombobulated and almost disfigured. With one eye open and a half a smile, he yells HELL YEAH!!*(*In Bigfoot language).
The sound of sirens fills the air amid the commotion. Roger and the crew are dealing with lake patrol, and looking at the damage the yacht has done to the marina.
Forgotten as usual in all of this is Kate. She’s left the scene to grab a pair of binoculars off the police boat. Looking up into the woods, she thinks:
“What the heck just happened to my life?! This may be the best vacation yet! (IF she can lose these people she’s been forced to vacation with….)”
Kate watches as Sheridan starts screaming as the lake patrol makes her step in the muddy shallow part of the beach to the right of the damaged pier.
“That’s just where you belong.”, Kate thinks as she tries not to smile. She then starts down the dock and heads into town.
CHAPTER 2:
Kate has a problem.
Well… its not really her problem.
However, she may be young enough not to know: this may become a problem.
She likes solving problems.
But, again:
is it REALLY a problem?
No, it’s not a problem.
Was there any real danger?
No, it seemed like no one was in real danger.
The only danger was when the panic set in.
It was her own family’s fault.
Bikini clad bimbos who blow everything out of proportion.
“Well,”, she thinks, “it WAS a huge hairy monster of some sort. But, still….that was SO. COOL. They just couldn’t deal with it.”
Kate walks onto the deck of the yacht where everyone is trying to look cool. Secretly, she knows they’re all freaking out. They’re all a bunch of 20-something rich snobs who would never congregate with the unwashed populous.
Penelope is texting her friends.
Miranda is posting online.
Sheridan, Roger’s girlfriend is trying to call newspapers and media outlets for exposure. (Someone so beautiful on the outside who gets uglier on the inside every day, Kate thinks. She’s everything Kate doesn’t want to be.)
Finally, we have Roger who is still on the phone with the guy from the insurance company.
“Yes, sir. The bench was not only ripped off of the boat but is now waterlogged as well.”
One eyeroll later Kate thinks, “This should be easy.” as she grabs an orange from a bowl of fruit in the galley and steps into view.
“Hey guys, I’m going to head down to the beach ….try to clear my brain. Anybody want to come?“ she says.
(She knows no one will come with her.)
Four sets of eyes glare at her. Kate gives a polite wave and heads down the ladder. She finds a place on the pier where she can set up without anyone noticing and pulls out the binoculars from her knapsack and stares into the lake’s wooded area. Scanning the trees for landmarks, she marks spots on her homemade map.
There are three bays to the lake. Its rather large and has a lot of woods.
It’s July 17, and there are only 14 more days until they go back to Toronto. She needs to be organized if this is going to work.
Somewhere in the great woods of Second Bay, M’halo sleeps and dreams. Yesterday was a great day. Everything he would have ever hoped. How could he do that again…. soon??! He dreams of the skateboard park and the big tube. He dreams of parasailing! He dreams of the basketball court.
His dreams are interrupted abruptly by a large foot.
His eyes open.
“Uh-oh,”, he thinks.
“She found out.”
CHAPTER 3:
The canopy of the Pa’Cha trees forms a shelter from sight and sunlight but can’t block out the noise. The two of them have been arguing for what seems like hours, but has only been about 10 minutes. Unironically, that is the same amount of time that M’halo has been awake. Ha’na is emotional, scared, and bears a slight look of disappointment. Or was that disgust? Like any normal teenager, M’halo’s face is a mix between outrage and disbelief.
M’halo’s Mother, Ha’na, stands over him, looking very Motherly, and very upset at him. She saw what went on yesterday, and she is none too happy about it. M’halo’s is a teenager. He thinks everything is cool, and nothing is wrong.
She speaks with a tone of caring and logic.
(*translated from Bigfoot language): “Why do you do such things? Why put us in danger. No one to protect us. Why do you do such things?”
“It’s not that big of a deal!”, he shoots back.
“It IS a big big deal! You know the ways! You know what you did was wrong!”, she pleads.
“Mom! Please! It’s leisure activity. It’s fun. They get to do it!? I get to do it! Quit making it a big deal!”, he says with hands waving as he raves back and forth through their latest encampment. (It’s been less than half a moon-cycle here.)
“It didn’t feel wrong! It felt GREAT! I enjoyed myself!”, he shouts in triumph as if because he got louder he’d won the argument.
“You enjoyed yourself!? So…. You enjoyed yourself, so now, I have to live in fear! After all we have talked about, after every lesson you have learned, you put your life in danger…. you put MY life in danger! All of the others.. now in danger!”, Ha’na answers finally showing a bit of an edge in her voice.
“NO! THEY”, (he points behind him towards the valley beyond the trees).….those who stole our land and force us to hide….THEY are in danger!”,
“M’halo! Stop this talk right now! That is not the way!” Ha’na has had enough and knows only what she has been taught about their lives in the woods. She prays it will be enough.
“The ‘WAY’ is what got Dad killed! How is THAT the WAY!? I’ve worked hard to make sure none of that will EVER happen to you! I’m bigger than Dad was, I’m stronger than Dad was, and I DARE any of them to threaten you or me in our home! I DARE THEM!” M’Halo’s anger is almost at its limit and his Mother knows she has to end this argument. She waits a few silent moments and then continues in a silent, controlled tone.
“M’halo…my son;. He loved you very much… your Father ‘s love for you still lives… from afar…. very, very far, …yes, but, do not go that path.” She leans her head upon her son’s chest with the hope that he’s going to calm down and see reason.
“ You KNOW it’s coming Mom. You knew since the day it happened, that one day I would grow. One day, I would grow strong, and inside me there would be anger at what happened. It will never go away. You, me, the others deserve to live free! Free of fear, and free to enjoy the WHOLE woods. Not just THIS woods. Our ancestors once ruled the whole woods, and now we are hiding! Cowering! No more!” he speaks with a seriousness his mother cannot deny.
Ha’na hugs her son. She puts her head back down into his chest and cries. “It is not the way. M’halo.”
He feels her tears fall upon his heart
He tries not to let them effect his opinion.
“M’Halo…. Please understand me. It is danger you are unaware of…”, Ha’na says tearily. She doesn’t know what to do with his anger and energy. She wishes she had help, and the tears continue to flow.
“I’m the man of the family.”, M’Halo states.
“Dad is gone. I promise you; NOTHING will ever EVER happen to you, and if someone EVER tries to do to you what they did to Dad they won’t live to see the next moonlight.” M’Halo’s eyes grew more serious than Ha’na had ever seen them. He held both of her shoulders and spoke those words. She barely hears him as she cries: he doesn’t know what to do with her sadness, so he hugs her. A full head taller than her… his shoulders broad and strong, he turns his face turns from a caring, supportive smile to an confident, menacing snarl.
“I promise, Mom.”
CHAPTER 4:
Kate has found a nice rock to sit on and have her lunch. She’s brought granola bars, a bottle of water or two and some beef jerky. She’s marked her map all through First Bay, and tagged the trees with a pocket knife to keep her on track in the future. The map shows she’s right at the crease where First bay meets Second bay. She looks over to her left into Second Bay’s woods and wonders if she could keep going. She decides to stand up and put her backpack on. She looks over into the woods of Second Bay one last time, takes a couple of steps, looks up to the sky and sees that the sun is going down. “Tomorrow is another day.”, she says as she turns around and walks away.
100 yards behind her a tree slowly bends down. The large figure of M’halo slides down the branches and lands heroically on his feet. He hides behind a large tree trunk and looks over into the First bay woods. He peeks to see the figure of a young girl walking away. He looks worried. Then, the snarl comes back.
End, book one
THRILLDABEAST BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 1
Kate reached the end of the woods and took a drink of water out of her bottle. She pulled the cell phone from her backpack. It was mounted to capture what was going on behind her while she walked. out of the woods. She’d tried to make as much noise as possible, and left some VERY spicy beef jerky on the rock she’d sat upon.
Touching a few buttons on her phone, her eyes go from slits –
to dots – and then to the size of car tires!
Frantically, she gets up and RUNS toward civilization! Her Backpack swings behind her and she goes as fast as she can down the road into town. She wants to look behind her, but also DOESN’T want to look behind her. She reaches the gas station/convenience store at the edge of town to hide in the bathroom. The door to the ladies’ room is locked (of course!) so she tries the Men’s room. Locked! Damn! She walks out the side door and sees the dumpster area. She sneaks through the crack in the hinged wall of the locked area and sits on the milk crate with her back to the wall. She takes a huge breath, grabs the phone out of her hoodie pocket and starts the video.
It’s a bit bouncy because of the way she walked. (She tried to be steady!) There’s the tree coming down….. like an elevator! There’s the huge feet…. and the massive dark brown/orange mass of hair she saw for a split-second before she panicked and ran. She must’ve taken a slight turn while she walked due to the terrain, because the video moves slightly off subject….
BUT THERE IT WAS!
She HAS to get home and upload this to her computer!!
She smiles and quietly says,
“This is AMAZING!”
CHAPTER 2
A black late model SUV with tinted windows, off road tores, and fog lights pulls into the hotel parking lot. Three people get out. One woman and two men. They’re dressed in tactical gear. These people are not desk jockeys. They enter the hotel room and begin to set up shop. One has a satellite hookup, the other has the wilderness gear, and the other has the map. The woman starts to talk into her headset microphone and the other two respond.
“Roger.” , they both say with speed and clarity.
The tall man finishes with the map on the wall and marks a spot; marks another spot; then tapes up a photo print-out from the social media page of one “@PenelopeeeXO98” before it was ‘removed”. It’s a shot of the M’halo boogie boarding. He’s smiling and having a great time. The tall man stares at the photo with a worried look and says,
“OK, Buddy. This is a long time coming. I hope you’re happy.”
CHAPTER 3
Kate was standing on the dock with her arms crossed as Roger, Sheridan, and her girlfriends are surrounded by TV Crews. Not pleased with what she’s seeing, Kate storms below deck and runs through the galley to grab her backpack.
She screams, “MOM! I’m heading to the skate park!”, and thrn runs back up the stairs.
Kate grabbed her board and her helmet and jumped over the rail. Landing on the pier like her favorite superhero, she straps on her helmet and races down the pier with a fierce look of determination. Oddly, her backpack is not on her back, but, worn on the front for some reason. She reaches into one of the pouches as she speeds closer to the throng of reporters and throws a handful of bread slices towards the huge seagulls that are perched on every post. She then throws the rest of the bread in the air above the reporters. The birds dive in, causing a ruckus. Screams emit from the pile. Kate cruises away, jumping over the rail, and sliding down it with a perfect dismount onto the boardwalk. Her smile is huge!
CHAPTER 4
M’halo’s smile is huge! He’s now escaped the clutches of his overly protective mother and is out for the day to fulfill his promise. In front of him, through the trees, he sees a basketball game. Preteen kids; boys and girls. Every once in a while a ball bounces astray and he wishes he could grab it. He wants to play! Finally, the ball bounces hard off the rim and is coming… fast! He’ll only have one chance!
He needs to… SPRINT!
SCOOP up the ball!
Instead of bouncing it, he presses it on the ground, and, using his arm as a pole vault to extend his extremely long body, does a roll in mid-air; tucks, and grabs the ball with two hands and comes down on the rim for a SPECTACULAR slam dunk! The ball goes through the hoop with such force it hits the ground and EXPLODES.
M’halo dismounts from the rim and lands on the ground. He looks to the sky and howls the word “AWESOME”* (in Bigfoot language). He never looks at the basketball players; he just smiles and speeds away into the woods. The children stand stunned, their backs to us.
One of them walks close to the woods, and quietly says, “Sick!”
CHAPTER 6
The Woods.
The three agents are scattered throughout the landscape, with the tallest the farthest away. The other man has the gun that looks like a flamethrower, and the woman, who is nearest to the SUV, has goggles on. Heat sensing goggles. The tall guy has a Tablet. The other man speaks first.
“Moose.“
“Bear“, says the woman.
“Moose“, says the other man again. “I’m telling you, they come out of nowhere, and, yes, you see videos of them moving really slow, but, they’re like a horse that has spiky tennis rackets on its head. They’ll kick a hole through your chest.“
“Lucky for us we have the tranquilizer guns.” says the woman.
“You’d better be a good shot, or, that moose is going to swat those tranquilizer darts away with his tennis rackets.”, says the other man.
Just then, the tall man with the tablet checks in on his com link.
“What are you guys talking about over there?”
“Wimbledon.” says the woman.
“I’m telling you” says the other man.
“Well, we could be in danger, so get your mind on that instead.“ says the Tall guy.
“I’ve got nothing on heat sensor.”, says the woman. “Let’s move on”
“Roger.”, say both men.
Meanwhile, back at the Yacht:
“Roger!“, says Sheridan. “…don’t you think we should go water skiing today? I just got this new line of swimwear sent to me from FashioNutta! I was thinking we could get some good shots of me skiing for the ‘Gram!“
Roger is watching the repairman fix the bench on the yacht. He answers a bit absent mindedly.
“OK but we’re doing it in Third Bay this time. Traffic is getting crazy out there.“
“Third Bay? Nobody goes to Third Bay!” says Sheridan.
“I know!” Roger yells looking at the sky with a huge eyeroll.
“Well, when can we go?”
“As soon as these guys finish the bench!”
“We’re losing daylight. Roger, If we’re going to monetize on this “event“, we need to react fast! Hurry up, boys!”
At that same moment, one of the workers looks at a plane going by with a banner that says “BIGFOOT ARE REAL”. At the same moment, the other worker is watching Sheridan walk by in her skimpy bikini (as she recites her dialogue above).
One worker looks up at the Bigfoot sign and says “… you think they’re real?”
The other worker looks at Sheridan in her bikini and says, “They’re definitely not real.”
Sheridan hears this as she walks to the steps that lead to the Yacht’s galley way. She tries to ignore the attention, but her ego needs the support. “Go ahead stare!”, she thinks, “That’s why I look this way, isn’t it?” She heads into the tiny hallway between the living quarters. Just as she goes to grab the handle to the bathroom door, Claire Starling, Roger and Kate’s mother, appears from inside.
“Oh, Hi Sheridan…..everything going well up top?”, Claire asks with an air of nonchalance.
Sheridan wants to answer, but decides she’ll just say the wrong thing. Silence will seem rude though, so she just says,
“I’ll only be a minute in here.”
Claire turns to watch the bathroom door close and raises an eyebrow. Roger’s girlfriend has some issues, she thinks. Claire walks through the living quarters to the galley to see how her upside-down cake is turning out. She checks for doneness but sees there’s more time to go as the cake is still a bit loose. She shuts the door and it makes a noise…or so she thinks. She opens the door again to check if she was hearing things. No noise.
“That was odd.”, she thinks.
Claire shuts the door again and takes a step over to the sink and hears the noise again. She knows she heard it this time. It wasn’t the door. She follows the sound. It keeps going in and out a bit and is hard to pinpoint but she gets to the bathroom door and to her surprise gets an earful of an intense conversation. Sheridan is screaming at someone to leave her alone. Claire is very worried and bursts in the door to stop what is happening inside. She enters to see the lights are off, and the young woman is on the floor in the corner. Claire turns the light on and looks down at Sheridan with concern.
“Honey…are you ok?”, she asks.
There’s no cellphone in Sheridan’s hand and she’s got tears in her eyes. Claire is confused but the motherly instinct tells her there’s a problem. She kneels to see if Sheridan is ok.
“Sherid…”, Claire tries to console her but is cut off.
“I’M FINE. EVERYTHING IS FINE”, she snaps. “I just need a minute…..please…..”,
Claire gets up slowly and turns to leave.
“Please…get the light.”, Sheridan asks.
Claire turns off the light and closes the door. She stands outside for a minute and then decides she has to go to town for some groceries.
And a glass of wine.
THRILLDABEAST BOOK 3
CHAPTER 1
Today is the day.
He knows the day by the position of the moon. The smell of the woods. The look the old fox gave him yesterday. The way his Mother is acting. No food. No foraging. No water. No bathing. There’s more on her mind than her own life, or even her son’s life.
It was on this day 7 moon cycles ago that his Father was lost to them. M’halo will never forget, and has always wanted to make them regret they ever trespassed into the woods. The invaders.
M’halo comes to the cliff every year on this day to be alone, and to tell the tale. He scales rocks no one else would dare and paints in the ways of the ancients. He tells the story of his Father, and how they took him from the world.
The first painting was when he was 9 Moon Cycles. It is a large proud painting of a proud Father. The artwork is crude to him now, but, he will leave it and not redo it. It is from a time and a place of hurt and love that he can never recapture. He has progressed in his life , (as has his artwork), each cycle.
The second painting is one of a Moon and the sky with his Father in the sky among the stars. That is where his Mother had told him you go when you are no longer in the woods. The third painting shows an intelligence jump, and also a sense of the oncoming anger. The ceremony and how he remembers it.
The fourth painting is of the Moon again, but, this time it holds a picture of his parents. It is more melancholy. He is almost ashamed at the emotions it brings.
The fifth shows him in the trees he loves so much, his world among the branches, menacingly looking down upon the ones who invade.
Finally, there is last year’s painting; It is a howl, a snarl, and a warning. It is teeth, and claws, and, yes, there is blood. He is not shocked by any of this….he’s been getting angrier every year. The invaders, take more and more every year, and he swears he will stop them. He paints anew, hanging effortlessly from the cliff by one huge hand. Just as the scene pulls back to see what he has started, the noise comes.
Turning his head to look down the ravine, he can see nothing. The noise is so loud it can’t be ignored. There is no doubt the whole forest hears it. but he, and most likely everyone in the area, hears the noise. Instantly letting go of his grasp, he falls to a safer landing place below. (Some 30 feet below. Itself an amazing feat.) He jumps from perch to perch, blindingly fast and with such incredible athleticism that it’s hard to comprehend. Headed towards his home, the worry begins to creep in. His Mother is in danger. It has to be the invaders, and they are going to pay dearly.
SNARL.
CHAPTER 2
The Woods.
Agent Evens reads the surroundings through her heat sensing goggles. She looks East and West, checks her data bank for anomalies and then checks the placement of her colleagues in the field. She does this over and over again.
Agent Schecktler checks his Ultrasonic Monitor. The synthesized signal is perfectly balanced, and his battery has a 75% charge. All systems are good to go. The Tablet screen is brighter than he’d wish. He feels like a target holding a lighted bullseye. He checks the location of his field agents and is reassured. Visual contact with Agent Evens is made. She signals no danger present.
Agent Ameca is weapons-ready-go. He’s been loaded since early this morning and refuses to check again. His concentration is upon the trees, mainly the high branches. He’s looking for movement more than color. He’s watching Agent Evens give signals to Field Commander Schecktler, and waits patiently. The noise is what bothers him….it’s not so much the volume as it is the tone. He feels the pain in the tone, and while he gives props to the Field Commander on creating it, (from a synthesized AI amalgamation of Baboon and a Hungarian Opera Singer no less), he feels it’s striking the terror neurons just a bit too hard. It was a quick job, and it works, but they’re going in blind. Noone knows what kind of power and rage set the subject commands. It’s a gut feeling, but, Ameca senses trouble. The gun is ready. So is he.
CHAPTER 3
The trees are strong, and they are his friends. They sense the urgency as he rushes towards danger (though they know this isn’t a natural noise he’s reacting to). They push back when he bends the trunk because they know he needs the speed. He’s actually flying at some points on the journey. He learned how to do this from hunting the squirrels as a youth. There were so many of them, and his Father taught him how to calculate the bend of the branches when the squirrels would launch to another tree in their attempts to escape his grasp. One day, he decided to climb the tree and surprise the squirrels. The trunks down low did not bend as easily, but higher up, they were practically like a slingshot. There were many falls and injuries, but all young inhabitants of the woods got hurt. It was how you learned. M’halo learned to ‘surf’ the high trunks of the trees and feel when the tree was about to snap back to its form. He would then use the momentum to leap in the air. The first flight was so beautiful. He had climbed a high cliff before, but this was very different; very special. That first flight had a first landing as well. It wasn’t as beautiful. He learned. Now, at 16 Moon Cycles, and almost 10 Moon Cycles of Tree Surfing, he was unstoppable. He could travel anywhere in the woods at a high rate of speed and the wildlife around him would just watch with amazement. (Especially his Mother.)
Trees as high as the sky bob and weave with the weight he throws around. M’halo stands 7 feet and 9 inches tall and weighs 415 pounds at this stage in his life. He will grow into adulthood in four more Moon Cycles. His diet ensures he is a tight mass of muscles and boundless energy.
“MOM!*” roars M’halo. (In Bigfoot language)
His face is snarling as he cruises through the branches. He knows he’s almost there and is beginning to think about what he’ll find. The noise is horrible, and he knows that for her to be in THAT much pain, she must be almost at the point of death. The thought at once both terrifies and enrages him. He comes down the last tree trunk to land and face his worst fears. He is met with nothing but a strange black thing he knows is one of the invaders toys. He’s seen them at the Basketball court with a form of rhythmic sound emitting. This one still wails, and he confusingly reaches down to pick it up in his huge claw and crushes it without any effort. The menacing snarl emerges once more. He turns as he senses an unfamiliar odor and is blinded by a explosion of light to his eyes (which are so attuned to darkness they have evolved into powerful receptors) and he screams with pain. He’s off balance, and that’s when Agent Ameca fires his cannon.
CHAPTER 4
Kate has been behind the huge rock at the top of the ridge for hours. She came out here today to find and warn the beast everyone is looking to capture. She knows how insane that sounds, but she saw his face when he was water skiing that day, and knows he was happy, and not a monster. Everyone else was in a panic, but she had come up from below decks late and only caught the show. She wants to help him escape the reporters. The cameras. The Sherriff’s office. Sheridan. Everyone.
Upon reaching the hill’s downward slope, she noticed a light she knew shouldn’t be shining under the dense canopy of the trees. She hoped it wasn’t a reporter. Maybe it was just some kids her age hiding out drinking their parents’ beer and having a little cookout. She ducked behind Snoopy Rock, (because it had the big beagle nose like the Peanuts character) and watched with the binoculars. There were three of them, and after a short time, they split up and found a place to set up camp. One of them pulled out a gun! A huge gun that looked like a missile launcher from a Shooter Game! There was a woman in the group, and she put on a VR headset and did a circular scan of the surroundings. Kate quickly ducked behind Snoopy Rock, hoping to evade her view. The taller man went to the middle of the opening and placed a black box with a handle on the leafy ground. He walked away with an IPAD or something, and suddenly, touching his ear, sent a signal to the other two and then waved his hand. A low, guttural moan started to sound from the box, which Kate now knew to be a Bluetooth Speaker. It began at a lower volume, and then slowly got louder, until it was so loud, she could probably run home and they wouldn’t hear her rustling the leaves. She didn’t go, though. She stayed, knowing full well what they were up to. They were after the beast. Kate was now more afraid than she was of finding the beast herself. Wow! The noise was AWFUL! It made her want to cry. She needed help. Who could she get to help her? Everyone else wanted the beast for their own reasons.
Kate decided she had to do something. She was still quite young, at 18, and had been known to do some impetuous things before, but, with the noise building and the scene evolving in front of her, she knew that in a matter of moments, there would be a fight for someone’s life and freedom. Heck, it could be those agents who might be in danger from the beast. She didn’t know which way to turn, so, she gathered the courage to stand up and create a diversion, even if it got her in trouble.
She began the climb up Snoopy Rock. Just as her head was about to emerge from the top of the rock exposing her to the man with the gun, she was engulfed by a dark shadow. Amidst the wailing noise from the speaker, and her whirling thoughts of danger, she turned to face…… the beast!
Except something was different. She remembered him being taller, and his hair being spiky and dangerous looking. This beast’s hair was softer, and eyes gentler and kinder. That being said, it was only a second’s thought before she realized this was STILL a beast, but she was too scared to react. Then, from inside her head, in the middle of her ears, came the sound of the word “PEACE” and the beast’s eyes emoted the same sentiment. “What just happened?”, Kate thought as the large hand of the beast took her arm and led her away from the scene.
CHAPTER 5
BOOM!
The cannon erupted, and a wide netting flew through the air towards M’halo.
He was snared! His claws could not rip the metal mesh of the trap nor was his strength able to shred the fibers. The sound had stopped. There was only a violent shrieking from inside the net. Agent Ameca took out his tranquilizer gun and hurriedly approached the beast. Agent Evens stayed back to capture the full view of the event. Field Commander Schecktler, free of any technology other than a cell phone, walked to the other side of the netting and grabbed the control remote. M’halo tried to reach back at him but the net began to shrank around him. He howled. He yelled. He was now afraid and knew he was in trouble. Agent Ameca reached out with the tranquilizer gun, aimed and fired. The dart hit the beast on the thigh. Then another dart hit his other thigh. One dart bounced off of the netting, but a fourth shot reached his shoulder.
“MOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!” he shouted*
(In Bigfoot Language)
BOOK 4
CHAPTER 1
The Sherriff’s vehicle rolled up to the gated entrance. The gate is open and a confused and concerned look comes across his face. Stepping out of the truck, he puts in a quick call to the HQ about his whereabouts. Just then a sound caught him off guard. A vehicle is coming out of the woods. Simultanelously he unsnaps his holster and touches the comm button on his left shoulder to alert the station of the situation while walking behind his vehicle. A rusty brown Volkswagen Mini Bus with the full Westfalia camping kit on top emerges from the trees, bounding over the bumpy branch and gravel access road. He sees the standard camper outfits on the driver and passenger, and loosens up a little on his revolver, but only just a little. Taking a few steps from the patrol unit, (which was left running just in case), he raises his left hand in a slightly friendly yet firmly aggressive gesture to bring the vehicle to a complete stop. The van driver hits the brakes and waves back. Sheriff Foster breathes a little easier, but still hasn’t let go of his weapon.
“Hi Folks….Sheriff Everett Foster, Forest Patrol.”, he says as he steps to the passenger side where the woman is seated. She seems like the lesser of a threat. He’s mentally checking off boxes in hopes of being safe and getting home in one piece tonight.
“How can we help you, Officer?” says the driver.
The woman smiles and takes off her sunglasses revealing a pleasant, agreeable face with happy eyes. As he gets closer he sees the trails of smoke coming out of the camper window atop the bus. Recreational marijuana? Most likely. That will hopefully mean this is a peaceful interaction.
“Investigating the loud noises and some perceived wildlife disruption in the area. Reports flooding the Station about a half hour back. You wouldn’t happen to have seen or heard….”
“Oh, we heard!”, laughed the driver, “that’s why we’re getting the hell out of here! Place was crazy for a bit, and we swear we heard howling…..We came here to relax, man. After the past week, and now all the reporters, cameras and rubberneckers, this place is a drag to be around.”
“All right, I understand. Well, you all can rest assured I’ll be getting to the bottom of the issues we’re having lately. Did you happen to see anything strange on your way out of the woods? I’m gonna head on in there.” said the Sheriff.
“Nothing on the way out, no….but, then again, we weren’t looking for trouble, if you know what I mean.” the driver said.
“Be careful, Officer,” the woman quickly said with a look of concern.
“Thank you, Ma’am. I appreciate that.”, he says back.
The van slowly starts back on its journey out of the dirt road, bouncing and bobbing over the rocks and puddles. The Sheriff watches as it heads onto the paved roadway and gets a sense of the weight the van moves on those little tires. The Father in him wants to stop and tell them to check the air pressure before they hit any highways, but the Lawman in him says that’s a problem the units in town are keen to look for in a Camper Van. Hopefully, they’ll be ok.
He jumps in his Bronco, turns on the flood lights and pulls into the woods at a good rate of speed. The truck is brand new, and he’s lost valuable time due to the Van.
As his vehicle disappears, we can now see the Camper Van in the distance, chugging down the road, getting smaller as it comes to the big bend in the road that heads into town. It makes the turn and the van starts to wobble and waver, shimmer in color and structure and eventually reveals the Agents inside of their SUV. It starts to pull away at a high rate of speed.
“Agent Schteckler reporting to base; all operations successful; heading to close up shop here and make the rendezvous point. Package is secure; all Agents intact and unharmed. Well done, team.”
“Well done….” says Agent Ameca, staring at the beast just inches away from his feet.
“Nice Sheriff.” says Agent Evens.
“Lucky guy.” says Schteckler. “He wasn’t ready for what we saw in there.”
CHAPTER 2
The Black SUV speeds away down the hill, and we see the top of the vehicle and the tree branches above it. Ha’na is moving at an incredible rate of speed through the trees, and there’s a small backpack hanging off of her shoulders for dear life. Only, it’s not a backpack. Its Kate, and she’s quietly trying not to freak out.
Ten minutes ago, Ha’na, THRILLDABEAST’S Mom, led her away from the scene of her only son’s kidnapping by some of the Invaders. She used some kind of mind manipulation, or mind meld, or something very science fiction-y to communicate her plan to Kate. Kate thinks now how crazy this is going to sound to everyone.
Ha’na is keeping up with the speed of the SUV, but only just barely. There are moments where they lose sight of it completely, only to then emerge from a patch of trees almost on top of it. Ha’na knows the woods better than Kate could have imagined. It’s almost like the trees and she are talking to each other. Every time Kate thinks they’re going to crash and die, somehow, there’s an opening just ahead and they’re ahead of the agents.
It looks like they’re slowing down, and Kate peeks over Ha’na’s head to see why. The road is going to turn left at the light ahead. Ha’na pulls Kate off of her back like a baby and lightly puts her down to the side. She holds her hand and says “FOLLOW” with the Martian Mind Meld thingy and Kate runs down the hill to the street. Kate does as she’s told and looks back to see Ha’na is gone. How does something that large move so fast?
Kate runs after the SUV and knowing she’s not going to be able to keep up if they make all the green lights. She sees the opportunity up by the Car Wash. Kids on bikes. She’s gotta do this fast. She runs up to them at full speed and knocks a boy off of his bike with her hip, and the bike barely leans over before she’s gone. The boys are all shocked by what happened, and they stand stunned. The victim of this robbery then screams “HEY!!!” and the boys realize it’s the pretty 18 year old Skater Girl they’re all in love with from the Skate Park that just robbed their good friend of his bike. They all look at each other with expressions of “whoa” and “what do we do?” A few of them are completely fine with what just happened because she’s the best thing that’s happened to the Lake this Summer. The bikeless kid jumps on the pegs of his friend’s BMX bike, and they’re off! “GET HER!” He yells. The chase is on, and they have NO IDEA what they’re getting into, but they’re boys, and there’s a super hot babe involved, so they don’t care one bit.
CHAPTER 3
A shiny new Tesla Cyber Truck drives down the main street of the town at a rate of speed one could describe as ‘parading’. Sheridan sits in the passenger seat deeply immersed in her Social Media addiction. She’s wearing the newest offering from RavishWear, sent to her the other day after a new personal record 300,000 streams of her FashionNutta bikini line. The boxes just keep coming, and what’s a girl to do? (If everything looks so good on you, you need to show it off.) (Actual quote.) Roger is driving. That’s all he seems to do, but, hey, the Cyber Truck was free. He just has to drive it with Sheridan in the passenger seat once a day and smile. He doesn’t have to say anything. Just drive and smile. Fine by him.
There’s complete silence in the truck, except for the sound of Sheridan’s audio clips being edited over and over, until finally Roger sees something up ahead.
“What… hey, is that Katie?”, he says to Sheridan, knowing full well she may not be paying attention, and partly hoping she isn’t.
Sheridan sits up out of her slouch position and looks out the front windshield. Sure enough, she sees her boyfriend’s little sister on a BMX bicycle going as fast as she can down the street on the right side, hair flapping in the wind. Just then she hears a noise behind her and looks in the rearview mirror. A pack of 6 or 7 young kids on BMX bikes are weaving in and out of traffic. One bike even has a kid standing on the back wheel somehow. Sheridan has instantly forgotten about Kate and is now seeing a good opportunity for a fun Reel. She rolls down her window to get a good video when the truck veers hard to the right, throwing Sheridan left onto the center console. She refuses to wear a seat belt because it leaves marks on her perfect skin, and also covers up her outfits when she’s sending Snaps to the girls.
“HEY!!” she yelps. “Roger! What are you doing?!” She gets herself back together and sits back in her seat.
“I’m following Katie. She just went down this side street on that bike. She doesn’t even have a bike! I wanna see what’s going on.” Roger says calmly as he watches attentively to Kate’s speed and position. She hasn’t seen the Truck yet, so he’s trying to hide as much as possible.
Roger looks in the mirror and sees the swarm of children on bikes take the turn as well. Weird, but everyone wants a look at the Truck since it was delivered, so he kinda gets it.
Kate pops a curb and flies across the sidewalk, going through an entrance lane and into a Hotel parking lot. Roger has to wait for the light and cars in front of him until he can follow, and he hopes he doesn’t lose her. The gang of kids blows right by the truck on both sides, and Rog hears one of the little miscreants say, “What is this thing, from Minecraft?’ as he laughs at the way the thing looks. Roger is not happy.
CHAPTER 4
The Agents in the SUV pull into the parking spot directly in front of the Hotel room. Agent Evens launches herself from the passenger seat and heads for the door. A quick glance to the side catches a teenage girl on a bicycle racing straight towards the SUV. Agent Ameca is also out of the vehicle and facing the twin back doors. He doesn’t see Kate approaching.
Evens has a split second to make a decision. Threat or no threat. She also sees a swarm of pre-teens on the same kind of bikes about 40 yards behind the girl. “Now we’ve got a situation.”, she thinks.
“Cary!” she yells, pointing at Agent Ameca who is facing her with one backdoor of the vehicle open. He freezes and looks around the side at Evens, but for some reason he looks up to the hotel roof. Evens is puzzled. Ameca’s eyes widen.
BOOM!
Broken glass explodes from the front windshield of the SUV. Something fell from the roof onto the truck? Evens runs into the hotel room and grabs her weapon. She quickly assumes the incoming fire position at the door’s left. Ameca has been blown back ten feet by the concussion of the crash. He gains his senses quickly, but then hears the screams of children to his rear.
“…..this is all going wrong…” he thinks.
Scrambling to his feet he turns around to protect the children from the nightmare in front of him. He is immediately rewarded with a blow to the head from Kate’s backpack!
WHAM!
Now, he’s in trouble…he tries to gain his balance before the next blow can reach him but reels in shock from a piercing shriek that suffocates all sound around the area. Ha’na is very angry. She lets out the angry scream of a Mother whose child is in danger, and willing to tear apart anything in her path to save him. Agent Evens looks out the door and sees Ha’na atop the SUV; roof caved in; glass destroyed. Ha’na rips the roof off the vehicle like tin foil.
“Where is Schtekler?!”, Evens thinks?
Agent Evens takes her eyes off the unbelievable scene evolving in front of her and locates her Field Commander. He’s unconscious and still in the front seat! Evens has no choice but to grab her phone and call for help.
Ha’na is in a state of rage she wasn’t sure she still had insider of her. As she chased the SUV through the woods, she instinctively knew Kate was holding her back. Ha’na has tried to control her animal instincts since her son was born, thinking that he should be more like his Father. Wise. Thoughtful. She was the wild one in the relationship, and he brought her a peace she has tried to pass down to her son. That wild instinct started to boil into a mad rage once she feared for her son’s life. The human girl was too fragile to survive the speed needed for a surprise attack. She could smell the vehicle and knew exactly where Kate was as well. They had been together only moments, but she was like a beacon of flower scents and dried cow tongue. The jump to the Hotel roof from the treeline was easy, and now she only had to watch out for the weaponry she saw them using on her son.
They would not be catching her so unaware.
They would not have the chance to use them.
They would pay.
Ha’na threws the top of the SUV to the side and saw the young girl attack the man who shot ser son.
“This girl is brave!”, she thinks, thankful for the support and distraction.
She sends a wave of intense emotion to Kate, and then looks down into the truck to see her son wrapped in a netting. He sleeps, but not peacefully. More humans start to appear in front of her. Smaller ones, also distracting the attacker with high pitched noises and yelps. Ha’na reaches down into the vehicle and tries to pull her son up and out, but he’s too heavy for the truck’s roof to bear both of their weights. The sides begin to curve and crumple. She slips down into the cabin, regains her balance and tries again. He moves but just barely.
“Too heavy when he’s asleep!”, she worries. She needs to wake him!
She sends a frantic call to Kate’s mind.
Kate had never struck another human with such force before in her whole life. She can’t believe she did it, and instantly regrets it. She felt the power of Ha’na during the run after the truck, but, seeing the violent intensity of the way she crushed and tore apart the vehicle had made her act in kind. (Well, as much as she could seeing how she only weighed 104 pounds.) There was no time to think, only act. She saw this man, with the short brown hair and earpiece, shoot the beast with tasers or something and he could do the same to Ha’na! Or her!! She’s ready to strike the man again when the sound of screams appear behind her. The kids from the bike gang followed her down here and are now within about 25 feet and are understandingly freaking out!
“$#*+!”, she screams.
She looks up at Ha’na who is struggling to pull her son out of the truck’s cabin and sees that M’halo is tied from underneath and secured to the floor so he can’t escape. Kate dives inside and begins to unravel the ropes.
Agent Ameca never saw this coming. He agreed to this job so he could get more experience in the field and advance his future as a Nature Conservationist. He’d worked hard to become one of the best and made sure he was the first to be called when there was an endangered species issue anywhere in the Northeast. Now, he was fighting a gang of 10-year-olds on bikes while the most dangerous, (and amazing), creatures he’d ever come across were attempting an escape back into the woods. His head was still reeling from the blow to the head from the Bicycle Gang’s leader, a teenage girl with long curly auburn hair and a backpack full of fury.
He races towards the children with his arms out.
“MOVE!” GET BACK!”, he screams. “LET’S GO! MOVE! MOVE!”
The kids are naturally drawn to the action in front of them and are stubbornly standing still as they watch in amazement.
Kate finally unravels one side of the rope and Ha’na feels the tension let loose just a little. She heaves and M’halo lifts up into the air just enough to see his arms dangle a bit.
“WAKE UP!”*, she screams at him!
(*in Bigfoot language)
Kate felt that in her mind! She heard it in her ears, too, which means that Ha’na is trying to reach her son with the mind thing.
“WAKE UP!!”, Kate yells, and tries to do the mind thing, as well. (She doesn’t know if it worked or not.)
Ha’na felt a wave of desperation and urgency come flooding though her soul. Kate had reached out to her son! The feelings of awe and surprise made Ha’na look to Kate with a sense of pride. She raised her eyebrows and stared at Kate with a sense of purpose. Kate somehow understood. They both gave everything they had at that moment, directing their energies to one purpose.
“WAKE UP!!!!!!”
The blast of strength and emotions from the two became one force, and M’halo immediately moved as if he was hit with an electric current. His eyes were opening slightly, and he let out a gasp that looked like a great yawn. He got up on one humongous elbow and felt a ringing in his brain. Had he fallen off the cliff while he was painting the picture for his Father and Mother? Had he eaten too much of the sweet tree roots his Mother warned him about? His leg was sore, and so was his shoulder. He looked out at the commotion in front of him and saw a human girl. His sight was still fuzzy, but, as he began to focus, he recognized her as the one from the woods. What? Why? His eyesight began to get clearer, and he noticed he was wrapped in a trap. The girl reached in and started to cut the netting with her weapon. He felt a tug from above him. He fell back down after the tug, and looked at the girl once more, still furiously cutting at his restraints. Adrenaline began to rush through his veins, and he let out a noise that, while not a roar exactly, was easily on the road to rage. The girl backed away, and he heard a noise behind her. He shifted and saw another human. He felt his leg and shoulder ache, and the male human met his gaze. It came back to him immediately.
That man hurt him.
That man is the reason he ached.
That man….is in BIG trouble.
The netting gave way, and with a fantastic shrug of his powerful shoulders, he was free of the trap. He rose to his knees. He saw he was in a manmade box of some sort, and he looked out at Agent Ameca with a snarl and very bad intentions. Kate had to run. She saw his anger, didn’t blame him, and knew she was in the wrong place at the wrong moment. M’halo began to gain his balance, and then stepped out of the SUV. He had one foot on the ground and the other wedged on the SUV sidewall ready to attack. The roar he let out was one he’d been holding back for years. It made a small child behind Agent Ameca close his eyes from the ferocity and volume. Ameca whirled around to discover the beast was free and guarded the children as best he could. M’halo raised his hand in a position to strike, claws bared. Muscles rippled and began to move forward.
Kate was afraid to look.
It was all going in slow motion to her, but also too unbelievably fast to do anything but watch. Just as the roar reached its loudest the huge claw started to swing; it was caught from behind, stopped a second before it could reach its target. Ha’na was still on the truck, or what was left of it, and she held her son’s wrist with all her might.
“NO!”*, she shouted!
M’halo looked back to see his Mother. His anger was at a dangerous level and he tried to pull back from her. Didn’t she see what they had done?
“They are trying to hurt me!”, he barked at her with no compassion for who he was speaking to.
“NOT THE WAY!”*, Ha’na shouted again.
“NOT THE”……
BLAM!!
Ha’na fell back to the left. Her shoulder and chest had been struck by a bullet sending her reeling. She was down.
“NO!!!!”, yelled Ameca.
“NO!!!!”, yelled Kate.
“NO!!!!”, yelled Her son.
Children screamed and scurried.
Agent Evens came out of the hotel and surveyed the scene.
“Ohmygodno….” She whimpered.
Agent Schteckler was now awake and had blood from glass cuts all over his face. He saw Agent Evens next to the truck and got out to see what was happening.
“Oh no…ohnoonnononno…’
He grabbed his cell phone and began to dial.
THRILLDABEAST BOOK 5
CHAPTER 1
TWENTY MINUTES AGO
Sherriff Foster turned the key and the Patrol Vehicle lit up with fog lights, emergency warning lights, and side spotlights by the rearview mirrors on both sides. He pressed in the clutch and put it in first gear. The truck moved forward about 30 yards into the woods entrance over the gravel and puddles on the dirt road and came to an immediate stop. Now there were brake lights as well. Then reverse lights. A hasty three point backwards K-turn followed, and the lights went dark.
Immediately after the VW Bus had pulled away, the veteran lawman realized what was bothering him. The smoke from the cabin had no smell. The man in the backseat looked like a beatnik hippie, and the two people up front seemed like they were from San Fransisco and owned a Health Food Store or something ….. But the smoke wafting upwards through the sunroof should have smelled. Even tobacco would have been a smell he would recognize. Since the legalization of recreational marijuana, Patrolmen are educated to know the difference in the odors of all substances. The second you see smoke your first instinct as a member of the Police force is to identify the substance. This smoke had zero odor. That was the first tingle he got from the camper van. The next was the way the truck pulled out of the entrance and hit the pavement. Something very, very heavy was in the back of that vehicle, but the tires did not reflect the weight when it reached the seam where the rubber hit the road. The final straw was the woman’s sunglasses. She was sure to remove them the moment he came to the window, and he had thought she was just being complacent in order to show obedience, but he recognized the brand. They were Phast’s latest “smart glasses”. Able to browse the internet, watch HD movies, or play video games all while the wearer had the glasses on with no TV screen or monitor needed. Sherriff Foster’s son, Timmy, had asked for a pair for his last birthday. Mrs. Foster and her husband deliberated upon the purchase for a few days. They knew he would either break them, or lose them, or worse, trade them to his friend for an item he wanted THIS week, and the glasses were so LAST week. The were almost a thousand dollars, and that was a lot of money. Too much money for that group in the rusty camper van, and a purchase that didn’t make sense with the rest of the van’s interior surroundings.
It was an intuition, and he was taught to follow his hunches.
He hit the road at a high rate of speed and was in pursuit. He did not know what he was in pursuit of, exactly, but he’d be ready to apologize or incarcerate, either way.
All he wants is to get it over with before he goes home tonight.
It was meatloaf night.
CHAPTER 2
“Unit Leader to base, copy”.
Sherriff Foster always went by the book, and this day was no different. Station to station, base to base. Steady wins the race. That’s what his mentor told him when he was honing his instincts as a member of the armed forces.
“Base copy, what’s your position Unit Leader?”, answered the dispatch.
“Mears Turnpike, mile marker 23, coming into town. Following a lead on the disturbance in Second Bay this afternoon. In pursuit of a Vokkswagen Camper Van, brown with some rustation. Three passengers. Should be catching up with them in a minute or so.”, explained Foster.
“Roger Unit Leader. Requesting backup?”, said the dispatcher, following procedure.
“Negative, dispatch. No backup necessary. Seems non-violent in nature. I’ll call in with details soon.”, he said matter-of-factly. “Unit Leader, out.”
“Roger, Unit Leader’, dispatch ended the transmission.
Foster came around a large curve in the road by the cliff and saw a black SUV ahead where he knew the VW should be. He crinkled his nose in surprise. He didn’t see anyone pass the entrance to the woods as he was getting in his truck, and was pretty sure he didn’t lose ground to a Twenty Five year-old four cylinder van with a weight distribution issue.
The vehicle took the left at the light and put on it’s right blinker, obviously heading into the Hanson Hotel parking lot which also housed a Car Dealership in the front of the lot. He sped up and took the right at the light, knowing the back entrance to the lot was quicker than hitting the line of traffic at the stoplight outside the hotel. He pulled in fast and gunned it trying to catch the SUV before it parked, but as he got the truck straightened out from avoiding the first yellow speedbump, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. A flash of brown and tan seemingly flew from the trees onto the roof of the hotel about 50 yards to his right. He slowed immediately to a crawl and leaned into his passenger seat to get a better look.
“My..God…”, he uttered quietly.
The figure was moving at breakneck speed across the roof. Sherriff Foster gunned the patrol vehicle to get out front of it as fast as he could. He pulled around the side of the hotel, weaving through parked cars and tractor trailers that blocked his view just enough to frustrate him.
“Dammit!”, he yelled as he lost sight of the huge mass of hair and muscle. “Dammit!”
Finally, he emerged out of the maze of vehicles and saw the SUV had beat him into the lot. They were way over in the other part of the hotel. He sped over there, noticing the woman in the passenger seat with the sunglasses.
“That’s her!”, he thought.
She ran to the door of the hotel, and the back left door also opened. A male with dark hair got out and walked around the back to open the door. This was the best opportunity Sheriff Foster had to see what was in the back of the truck. He should call this in, but he knew there was no time for a conversation and he wasn’t quite sure he believed what he saw anyway.
The Sherriff’s truck blazed through the lot and a clear lane was open to the right of the vehicle when the hairy brown figure stood on the roof above the SUV.
BOOM!
“Holy!’, exclaimed the Sherriff.
He stopped the truck immediately and started running. His left hand instantly slid to his holster and unclipped the strap. He had called in the pursuit of the vehicle as non-violent in nature, but he had no idea it was going to get crazy like this….
The sheer force of the beast’s impact on the black SUV was incredible. The monster tore the roof off of the SUV and the Sherriff pulled his weapon.
The maze of cars around him served as a shield and a hindrance. He couldn’t take his eyes off the action ahead of him, so he used his right hand as a guide while going as fast as his 49-year-old feet and legs could go. Sliding around a trunk, he saw a girl on a red bike just like his son Timmy’s.
“Details…details. Let go of details until later”, he thought.
The girl leapt off the bike and instantly swung her backpack striking the male suspect at the back of the SUV. He was caught off guard. What was even happening here?? It was then that he heard the voices of children, and one voice so familiar he must have been mistaken. The monster was now inside the back of the roofless vehicle thrashing and screaming. He took his eyes off it for one second to identify the distracting noise he’d heard and confirmed it was his son Timmy.
“What the…?” he yelled.
He watched as Timmy jumped off the back pegs of another kid’s bike and ran towards the mayhem.
“NO!”, the Sherriff yelled, but obviously the child had his mind made up.
Timmy ran straight for his bike, which was on the ground where Kate had left it in a heap. As soon as he reached it, a roar came from inside the SUV that was different than the sound Foster had heard just a second ago.
Fear.
The past five minutes he’d been in control of the situation and his emotions, but his son….
Fear.
The male suspect whirled back to cover Timmy, and when he did, a huge claw emerged from the SUV. The back door was in the Sherriff’s eyeline. Instinct took over, as well as the love of a parent for his child. Foster kept his momentum moving left, got in a position, and fired into the back of the vehicle blindly.
BLAM!!
Agent Ameca looked to his right and located the weapon.
Timmy looked too and saw his father with the gun.
“DAD!”, he said loudly.
Foster steadily crept closer after he fired to secure his son’s safety.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!!??”, he angrily yelled at his son, all the while hugging him tenderly with his free arm.
“That girl stole my bike! I knew you and Mom were going to be really mad at me, so I had to get it back. Dad, what is that thing?”
Timmy was talking at a fast rate of speed in a high-pitched tone. A stark contrast to his usual trying to act older and tough. Now, he was scared and on the verge of tears.
“Just get back. Get your friends and get way, way, back!”, Foster said with confidence. He had to show the kids, and his son most importantly, that he was going to handle this insanity.
Foster turned towards the scene and again looked surprised. He knew he’d hit the subject in question, but now he saw another one. It had his back to him, and if he was going to take the shot now was the time. He held his gun towards the ground and slowly advanced on the action ahead. The larger one had fully emerged from the back of the vehicle, and the Sherriff could see clearly that he had been in the back of the SUV tangled in a netting that was now on the ground and wrapped around one of its humongous feet. The huge monster was standing over the first monster who was bleeding from the upper right chest and shoulder area. Screams could be heard from the girl who stole Timmy’s bike, and also from the woman with the sunglasses, but the loudest scream came from the larger monster itself. It was a scream of pain, and fear. The same fear that Sherriff Foster had just experienced.
He felt as if there was a mistake made somewhere, and he might have been the one to make it.
The monster turned.
Tears in its eyes.
Teeth bared.
Claws open.
Angry.
Scared.
Sherriff Foster had never been more unsure and afraid in his whole life.
He lifted the gun. He began to pull the trigger.
CHAPTER 3
Kate would think about the next ten seconds for the rest of her life. “What was I thinking?”, she’d shiver from the thought.
She was less than 2 yards from a cornered 500 pound beast and also next to a loaded gun in the hands of a professional marksman. Her solution to this situation was to jump in the middle of them both as if it was just a couple of kids on the playground.
“NO!”, she yelled so loudly her voice cracked and made people wince because it sounded painful.
M’halo was distracted just long enough for Ha’na to grab his hand again. She was up on her feet, wounded, but with a strong sense of wisdom and love she implored her son to stop and think. She said it with one word.
“Run.”, she said quietly.
“WHAT!?”, he looked at her bloody shoulder and shrugged her hand off his claws.
“I SAID RUN! NOW!!”, this time in a tone that did not invite discussion.
Kate saw what was happening and felt the urge inside her head once more.
“GO!”, Kate said in her strongest mind-pushy-thing she had just learned how to do.
M’halo turned to her and looked confused.
“What?”, he said back to her, and then to his Mother.
He looked in his Mother’s eyes and he began to cry when in actuality he felt he should be angry and making the man with the weapon pay.
She looked back at him with love and understanding and unwaveringly said:
“Please. RUN!”
She then fell on one knee towards Kate. M’halo ripped a door off of the SUV and threw it at the Sherriff. He shot the Sherriff a vengeful look and took off.
“I’ll find you Mom! I promise!*”, he screamed.
“I know son; I love you! Go to the curtain!*”, she hollered back.
Kate listened to the language, and knew they were making plans to find each other. You could tell from the tone. M’halo was gone in an instant. Kate turned to look at the Sherriff.
“Thank you….,”, she said quietly.
She noticed he was crying.
Everett Foster, the man, hated violence. He had reacted as Sherriff Foster, the law enforcement officer. He turned to look for his son and his friends. They were back behind the Police truck with a woman wearing a bikini top and cutoff shorts. There was also a man standing next to a Tesla Super Truck. The woman was filming the kids’ reactions to what had just happened.
“Oh, boy…”, Foster said. “TIMMY! GET OVER HERE NOW!”
Timmy looked over at his Dad and knew his emotions had gotten the best of him. He grabbed his bike and threw it in the Police truck’s bed. He jumped in the vehicle and hoped his Dad would just forget about him and not be too mad.
“Excuse me, Officer. If I might have a quick word?”, said a voice from behind him.
Foster looked down at Ha’na who was breathing heavily as the young girl held her head off the ground. He looked up at the voice with an expression that read confusion and a let out a sigh of exhaustion. The man who spoke put out his hand.
“Agent Thomas Schteckler, Newfoundland Security Director, Science and Nature Division. We need to hurry.”, he said matter-of-factly as he pointed towards the scene.
“Newfoundland?”, Foster said?
“We’ve come a long way, sir.”, the Agent confided.
“OK,”, the Sherriff shrugged. “What’s up?”
THRILLDABEAST BOOK 6
CHAPTER 1
The stream was bubbling into a small pool under a weeping tree. The sun was out and it was filtered through the branches and leaves putting on a natural light show for the two parents and their beautiful child.
Ha’na and Mauo had been together for a year now. They spent each day together in their home, the woods. There was a large lake on one end and this brook. The brook gave more shelter now that they had brought a child into the woods as the lake was filled with humans.
M’halo, their son, was now eight months old. He swiped at the water over and over trying to grab the minnows and larger fish he saw under the water’s surface. He bore a striking resemblance to Mauo in his facial structure and had streaks of gold hair in his brown mane. Ha’na was so proud of him.
She had been a wild creature until she met Mauo under the moonlight one night. She had never seen such a handsome male. He was so different from the rest. She was instantly standoffish to him and reacted stubbornly. She had no idea why. He looked puzzled at first, and then decided he should tread lightly. They had been living in the same woods for a week when she finally felt something other than resentment for the way she was feeling. She saw him on that day and looked embarrassed for her previous actions. He was wise enough to let her actions pass, and they embraced. They’d been together ever since that moment.
Mauo brought them to a safer place among the mountain cliffs. It was behind a waterfall just off of the great swamp fields. Ha’na never knew it was there, and she’d been in the woods for her entire life. Ha’na became pregnant almost immediately and Mauo would provide shelter, safety and food for the new family.
The birth of their child was a momentous occasion. Mauo could not believe what he was seeing, and Ha’na seemed to know exactly how it all should go….. although she didn’t know how she knew. It was natural to her, and it was perfect.
Now sitting in the shade of the tree and watching her son, she wondered how she’d gotten to this point. It seemed impossible just a few moon cycles back that she’d even find a mate. She looked at Mauo and smiled. She got the look back from him that she’d expected and she blushed. He walked over and grabbed M’halo from the water. The boy giggled and splashed his wet hair into the air. Climbing up onto his father’s back, they walked towards Ha’na on the shore. Mauo reached down with one huge claw and pulled a big fish from the stream. He presented his trophy to Ha’na as M’halo shrieked with joy.
They headed home to what Mauo had named “Yinishbaal”. The curtain. The cascading water hid their cave home from the outside world. Ha’na wondered who had lived here before they did, but Mauo just told her he would make sure they would be safe. He would constantly fight off bears and on one occasion a large snake!
The Curtain was the safest place they would know in the whole woods.
CHAPTER 2
Years passed, and the family created a life you could only imagine happening in a storybook. The child grew like a young tree and his parents fell more in love every moon. The woods became a holy place. The threat of civilization was on the other side of every mountain, yet the three of them relied on the bond they shared to keep the peace within their hearts and minds.
M’halo became his father’s best friend. He learned valuable lessons every day. Most days, he was as accident prone as any normal child. Mauo watched him grow and tried to teach him patience and honor. He had no problems with the honor part of the lessons, but the patience… well, that was going to take some time. The boy was rambunctious to put it lightly. Mauo was glad to take the brunt of the days with the boy, leaving Ha’na to herself during those trying moments. The boy would come home scratched and bruised but as happy about he and his father’s adventures as he could be. Ha’na got worried from time to time, as any mother would, but she trusted Mauo. He was raising a man. Raising him strong.
Ha’na and Mauo were protectors of the woods. The residents of the mountain range were grateful for the pair’s constant watchfulness.
While M’halo slept, the two sat in the moonlight while the creatures of the area dropped by to visit, and sometimes bring gifts. The Hawks always surprised them with the most amazing things from over the mountains. M’halo would wake up to these treasures and his curiosity began to get the better of him.
He saw the hawks flying high one day, and he took off to catch up with them. Reaching the top of the mountain was easy, but the hawks seemed to keep going and were so far away he wondered if he should follow. He looked down the side of the mountain and saw the other life that was out there. It was both frightening and amazing. The hawks were almost invisible now in the sky. He looked back at his home in the valley and decided to go back. He felt afraid without his father by his side. M’halo didn’t like being afraid.
The week following, a fox flew down the side of the big hill and into the valley. It was mid-afternoon and Ha’na was alone at the stream while her boys did what they do.
“Ha’na!’, yelled the fox, “they’re coming on the hill!”
Ha’na didn’t respond. She’d always known this was a possibility, and was ready for whatever came. She nodded to the fox, and ran down stream and into the curtain. Grabbing a spear and her club, she came out of the curtain with the look of concern.
CHAPTER 4
Mauo moved faster than anything M’halo had ever seen. The boy could barely keep up with him, and would lose sight of his father around trees and rock formations.
“DAD!”, he’d shriek, “WAIT!!!”
Mauo could not wait and was almost assuredly trying to lose his son. He had felt the push from his wife. She was the love of his life, and he was driven by the fear of loss for the first time after years of safety and joy.
M’halo watched from twenty yards behind as his father stabbed a hand out for each branch to propel him faster ever faster. He used the biggest rocks to leap to the hanging vines and swung farther than he could jump. M’halo was now 40 yards behind, and his young legs grew weary. He knew they were headed towards the curtain, but, he did not know why. He did know something was wrong, though, as his father hadn’t spoken a word. He just took off and ran. The forest animals were around, and some of them seemed to be there to help the young boy. The racoons came out of their nest inside the sideways tree to offer a hiding spot. M’Halo refused and kept running. The deer came as a family towards him. The Father stood tall looking at Mauo fly away on a vine while his wife pointed to the woods on the left. She encouraged M’Halo to go with her to safety. Her children bounced at him to get him to stop his progress. Again, he refused and plowed ahead. The mother deer ran after him, but the buck snorted loudly, and she stopped. Turning her head to plead with him, she saw her young were following. She knew she had to stop. She watched as the young bigfoot ran as fast as his little big feet could go towards certain danger.
A dark blur appeared above the branches. The mother deer knew what it was and appeared relieved, if only a little. Atka, the great black eagle, spirit of the skies, had heard the call. If you catch a good look at him, you’d see great wide wings and a sheen of feathers like iron covered with streaks of silver. His cowl was a mature dark grey where there once was white. This added to his mystery.
Atka swept down through an opening past the twin pines and grabbed M’Halo by the scruff, securely and as gently as possible. M’Halo was unsure what was happening for a few moments. He thought he was flying at first and was thrilled. Then, he felt the tug at his skin and looked up to see Atka, the great eyes in the sky. He was again thrilled, and then, with a look down, was scared to death.
M’halo knew of Atka and his legend from the days Mauo and he would watch Atka on his perch. He lived at the top of the biggest peak in the range. Atka’s eyesight was so great that he could guard the valley with confidence even from a distance. His speed was legendary as well. The lives Atka had saved in his time on the perch were numerous and meaningful. Only the fish had feared Atka. He needed to eat, too, you know. M’Halo would watch as Atka soared in a circle around his perch at the peak of the tall mountain. It would seem he was miles away. M’Halo would become mesmerized by the movements he saw in the sky as the great bird floated on the high winds. He would look for any sudden changes in the pattern of Atka’s movements, and then, just as suddenly as a lightning bolt in the storm’s sky, the black eagle would catch a tunnel current and BLAST into the valley. He would get closer than M’Halo wanted him to sometimes, revealing his great size and the power of his massive wings. M’Halo would dart behind his father in fear of being scooped up like a fish and eaten for dinner.
Flying above the woods away from his father just now, M’Halo looked up and wondered: “Am I now dinner?”
Atka felt the boy’s uneasiness and hoped he wouldn’t be hard to manage. He needed to get the boy to safety. His mother, Ha’na had begged him to do so. Atka headed for the perch as fast as he could fly.
CHAPTER 5
“It is not the way, my love…..let it be.”, said Mauo.
“They will not take this from us too!”, Ha’na screamed.
“They do not want to harm us. Do not fight!! M’Halo is safe!”, Mauo spoke back.
Hana looked over her shoulder at the high mountain perch where she saw Atka taking her son. She knew he was safe but could not stop her anger.
“Everything they do harms us!”, Ha’na said loudly. She had her spear raised dangerously high above her shoulders daring an Agent to advance upon her home. Mauo had arrived just as the team of humans made their presence known. They had been undercover, (or as hidden as they could be to ones with as advanced a sense of smell as the animals of the woods possessed) and were now surrounding the Curtain. They had the advantage in numbers by over double, and Ha’na was scared it was all going to end right here and now for their family.
“Ha’na, my love….”, Mauo said, bending on one knee and taking her hand. “Remember the good in me…in us. It is me they are after, not you…and they don’t know about our son. Keep him hidden. Keep him safe. I love you more than any moon in the sky. Please…. I beg you not to fight.”
“What are you even saying!!!”she screamed. “NOONE will be taking you anywhere! You are not leaving here! It will be over my dead and broken body if you do I swear upon the stream and the sky!”
With that last statement, and the look in Mauo’s eyes of defeat and eventual capture, Ha’na broke free of his grasp and charged the men directly in front of her. She drew back her spear and stabbed at them, hitting their weapons and shields. The men gave ground, but only to allow the others to fall in behind her and surround her in an even tighter formation. She swung her spear like a huge wand with both hands in a wide circle. Her shrieks echoed off the curtain cliff, and the animals of the woods, her friends, screamed with her…The men closed in, finally grabbing her weapon with force of numbers and then came the netting. Terrifying screams of fear erupted from the wild beast, who just hours ago was peacefully preparing to have her family rest their weary heads and dream of the next day together.
Mauo watched in horror as the men surrounded him as well, but he did not fight. Tears rolled down his face without blinking as he watched his love disappear into a dark pile of padded blankets that muffled the sound of her yells. He put his head down and reached out his hands. He was not new to this procedure, and knew his time was up. Restraints were applied hastily and Mauo was no longer free.
“I LOVE YOU HA’NA! I’ll see you in the big sky again! I promise! Do not fight! Tell our son it is not the way! It is NOT the WAY!” he screamed to her knowing there was only this last moment for them to talk.
“MAUO!!!! NO!!!”, Ha’na begged at the top of her lungs as she made one last effort to break free. She moved the whole pile of agents that had her tied down about three feet in the air with her strength.
“OKAY! That’s enough! Agent Schtekler! Do it!”, the commanding officer spoke, but spoke with respect to not only the situation but to the victim as well. There would be no injuries to anyone. Not on his watch.
Agent Schtekler looked nauseous as he walked up to the trapped beast. He reached out his hand and pointed the tranquilizer gun.
“SHPTT!”, the weapon fired one shot into Ha’na’s leg. M’Halo’s mother gasped with the pain. Mauo looked away. He knew she would never stop. He loved her so much for that.
Atka had dropped the bag at the perch atop the mountain and circled back to the valley. He could see what was happening from farther away, but his feelings for the pair compelled him to get closer to the pain and emotion of the moment. It was very unlike him to do so, thought the other animals.
Atka watched as the men led Mauo into a holding cell on the back of a huge truck. He never looked up. He never looked at the curtain. He did, however, look up at the sky and see Atka. Atka looked Mauo straight in the eyes. They did not gesture or make a noise. None were needed. Atka knew he would never see his friend again. Such was the way of the woods. He flew straight up into the sky and sounded the alert that the conflict was over. The sound of an eagle with a broken heart bounced off the canyons. High above in the perch, M’Halo’s tears ran heavily onto his chest. They would not stop until the moon went down. His family was no more.
THRILLDABEAST VOL.1
BOOK 7
CHAPTER 1
PRESENT DAYHa’na had been awake for a few hours. She knew by the smell she was somewhere in the human’s world. The woods were very far away. She resisted the urge to open her eyes. Her shoulder did not hurt, but she knew it should. There was a ghost pain and the memory of the moment she was wounded. She had never seen her own blood before…there was so much of it. She moved her fingers just enough to know she was going to be ok. That was just physical, though. She tried her best to not think about what had happened. When was it? What day on the moon cycle was it? Had she lost hours, days, or weeks?
Inevitably, she thought about and saw the face of her son in her mind. Instantly she began to cry. It was bound to happen, and she couldn’t fight it anymore. The tears came in droves, and her physical and emotional states met in the middle creating the type of sadness you cannot hide. The low moaning whimper of a Mother without the power to see and hold her child one last time…not knowing if he’s going to be able to survive alone. Her eyes opened. She stopped crying instantly.
“Hello again.”
He smiled at her with tears in his eyes. He was a tall Caucasian human with short cut blonde hair and glasses. He wore a lab coat like a Doctor, and he had a tablet with charts on the screen. There was a slight uneasy moment there where he wondered what would happen next.
Ha’na turned her head slightly to meet his gaze. They stared at each other for what seemed like minutes but were in all actuality the longest lasting 10 seconds of their lives.
“Mauo….my love. My love? It is ….you. It is you…”
Ha’na reached out her hand and the man took it in both of his, letting go of the tablet.
Ha’na began to sit up. She was having trouble understanding what her surroundings were, so there was a bit of awkwardness getting situated. She had been placed in a motorized bed of nanobyte padding to help her heal faster and increase her comfort.
Another man came over to help make her comfortable and the one she called Mauo pulled up a tall chair on wheels and sat close to the bed.
“How do you feel?”, he asked. “Can we get you anything? Anything at all?”
“I feel fine.”, she said back. She reached her right hand up to her injured shoulder and felt a bit of tenderness, but otherwise it was fine. “Why do I feel fine?”, she slyly asked the man.
He began to speak about the reason she was not hurt anymore, but they were all words she did not care to understand. She just looked at his face and looked in his eyes. There were echoes of her memories in there, and she could also see her son in there too.
He began to taper off in conversation as he saw her eyes deepen in thought. He took a huge breath and exhaled.
“Ha’na….”, the words came out of his mouth in human language. She understood what he was saying for some reason. “I’ve put a device in your hippocampus to alleviate the language barrier here. Do you know where we are right now?”
“I do not. I know I do not like the smell.”, she said softly, embarrassingly.
“The last time I saw you, I said I’d see you again. Come. Look.”, said “Mauo”.
Helping her out of the bed, she stood for the first time in days. She towered over Dr. Rex Peatfield. He could not help but be amazed at her…he always revered her and it had not lessened with the passage of time and the distance between. Ha’na got her balance back quickly, and she followed as Rex led her by the hand. Her eyes looked ahead and saw the wild wonders of technology all around her, but the sight that made her eyes open widest was the one that surrounded the whole area.
Windows five feet high lined the huge room. Outside the windows, however, there were no trees. No mountains. No rivers. No lakes.
There were clouds. Only clouds. They were humongous and went on forever. The sky she recognized, as she did the sun. There were no birds up where they were. She stopped as she got within a few feet of the window and became frightened.
“It’s perfectly safe, my love…”, said Rex.
“Am I …..are we in the High Sky…?”, her words trailed off into a soft weep. She looked at the man who was her husband, but was no longer her husband but a man. Her eyes began to get more serious. Worried.
“No, Ha’na…”, answered Peatfield quickly, as if he knew it was coming. (The “High Sky” was the term the woods people used for the final resting place. Humans call it Heaven.)
“One day, I said I’d see you in the Big Sky. Not the High Sky. I was true to my word. Look.”, he said as he held his hand out to display the world below them.
She crept closer as she listened to his words. She felt safer by the second and got right up on the big windows. She could see the Earth, the whole woods of the Earth, and the waters of the Earth, too. They were up so high she could see the curve of the woods as it seemingly led off into infinity. Never had she imagined the woods to be so vast.
It all began to pile up in her head. So much going on. So much to take in. Finally, she could take no more surprises.
“Mauo. Where is our son. Why am I here? Why are you here? Why are you like this?” Ha’na was visibly shaken by the happenings. One could hardly blame her.
“Let’s go have food. I am starving and we always did like to eat together. Please?”, Rex asked.
“Yes.”, Ha’na said. Ha’na would have said anything for answers. She wasn’t hungry at all, but went along the hallway with someone she’d known for years yet did not know at all. So strange.
CHAPTER 2
M’Halo stood in the curtain. Directly in the curtain, water cascading over his head and body. He had been there for almost an hour, and didn’t want to move. The water kept his mind off of the disturbances that had destroyed his family. The water cleansed his mind and body. He may never move. The moon was beginning to win the battle in the sky, and the heat of the day was slipping into a murky mist. Still, M’Halo stood in the curtain.
The night would bring feelings. That was the last thing he wanted right now. The night would bring silence. He didn’t want that either. The night would bring memories. He begged his mind to not do so. He was hungry. He was exhausted. He was wet. He was miserable.
One could not blame him.
However, he knew it was all his doing, and that he was the one who should get the blame.
She told him over and over, but he would not listen. It was almost at times like he COULD not listen. Why was that? Was there something wrong with him? Why would he go ahead and do things that he was told were wrong? Look what happened every time. Bad things. Bad things happened.
The first to reach the curtain was Nassama. She was alone, and came slowly up the riverside checking to see if there were others there yet. She knew there would be others soon as the word had gotten around to almost the whole woods.
Nassama was the daughter of the King Buck deer, Tona, and his wife Meela, who so long ago tried to stop young M’Halo from reaching the curtain when his father got captured. Her father and mother had long been gone from the woods, taken by the humans as most of her kind were. She was an adult now, but felt like a child again seeing M’Halo. They were roughly the same age and had always enjoyed the same woods.
“Are you ok?”, Nassama said. It was all she could think of to say. She knew it was the least she could say, but didn’t know if he wanted to talk.
M’Halo opened his eyes and lifted his head. He knew he looked stupid to her. Maybe he was still under the waterfall so no one could see his tears.
“I am fine. I will be fine.”, he said very steadily. He was acting. He wondered if she believed him.
“I know what you’re going through, M’Halo….it is very hard. I still think about them every day.” Nassama lowered her head and then caught herself. She raised her head proudly back to the conversation.
“Will you stay here or have you a place to hide? We all think they’ll be back eventually. Do you?”
“I have to stay. I have to fight if they do come back. I don’t know what else to do.”, he said as he finally walked out of the downpouring water. “I am not smart like my father was, and I am not as nurturing as my Mother….”, he said with a small twist of his neck. Nassama saw it, and understood what was beneath the words.
“If I stay here, don’t I put all of you in danger? They could come at any moment. They take what they want. They destroy our land and lives before we even gather our families.”, M’Halo said. He walked to the waterfall and looked up at it’s source. He thought he saw something up there, but knew he wasn’t thinking straight right now and ignored it.
Nassama walked closer to the curtain so she didn’t have to yell over the sound of rushing water anymore.
“Every season we have losses, and every cycle there is danger, M’Halo. We have no control over the woods. We think we do, but have we really ever been safe. Our parents did their best to raise us here…protected us from the dangers….we grew in an environment of danger.”, she said confidently. M’Halo felt he was losing the argument and interjected.
Shamefully he butted in and said “I am the da….”,
“NO!”, Nassama butted right back, just like her father. He would have proud.
“We were all completely victims….afraid to come out of hiding before your parents came to the curtain. Your father was the first to call on the Eagles and ask for help. Your father was the first to build shelter for the Raccoons. He built the dam in the river every year. I would not be here right now if it wasn’t for him. Your Mother was in the woods before, but my Mother said she was afraid. She would barely come out in the moonlight until they became one together. They built our world. M’Halo….we need you now more than ever. We wish you would stay. Please.”
M’Halo scoffed in the pause of her words. “The others are all in fear of me! I am no protector. I am no leader.”, M’Halo said.
“I am going to be 16 moon cycles soon. Still a child to the woods. I bring trouble every day I am here. I see only you here. Noone would dare come with you. You are a fool asking a fool for help.”
“Boy,”, came a booming voice from above the trees, “call no one a fool that asks for your help.”
M’Halo was spooked and looked up as he darted to the left for shelter. He knew whose voice it was but the thought of him being here and not being able to see him in the dark scared his soul.
“Great Eagle!!!?”, Nassama blurted out in shock. She naturally sat back on her legs in reverence for the last of the protectors. She also could not see him, but, it was easy to feel safe knowing he was there.
“You are wise, young Nassama. Wise as your Mother. Stubborn as your Father.”, the voice in the dark said as if it was written on the cliffside. The noise of his great wings broke the silence of the moment and the huge black eagle dropped down to the other side of the pool across from Nassama and just to the right of M’Halo.
“Great Eagle, you have protected me along with my parents my whole life. I’ve messed up everything. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault…”, said M’Halo. He turned as he spoke and got back in the waterfall. His head hung down. Nassama looked away for a moment, then held her head high and stared at Atka.
“Boy….you’ve no idea what I’ve seen in my time in these woods or even farther from my perch. Sometimes…”, he crept a bit closer to the waterfall, “this ability to see so far in the distance…it is a curse.”
Atka flapped his wings once and his body leapt in the air. He stuck out a huge clawed foot and snagged M’Halo’s shoulder as firmly, yet gently, as he could and pulled him from the water. M’Halo felt the tug and leaned backwards like a weeping tree swaying in the big winds. Facing the Great Eagle, he saw the age in his face and the tufts of grey that now had majestic white streaks. He tried not to look shocked, but failed.
“Yes, boy. I am much older than I was…I am doing what I can, and still wait for the return of my daughters. I know she’s out there somewhere, and she will return but, until that day the woods needs a protector. The woods needs a group to keep the young safe from harm. The woods has always needed ones like your parents. Since the day they took your Father, your Mother stayed strong for us all, and together we moved forward…kept the woods alive. It’s the time, no matter how young, no matter how reckless, to find the strength…. the courage. It will be your way. Your voice. You are now my hands…my partner. I have the faith of many skies in you, Great M’Halo of the woodspeople.”
It was not lost on Atka that this speech of his could be the end of the woods. He had seen the boy grow, and not knowing Mauo before his migration to the Curtain, saw only what he observed of him. M’Halo was already much bigger than Mauo, and at such a young age had been able to do things his parents had never thought of trying. The boy stood high as a tree when he was confidently enjoying his life, and was as strong as any inhabitant of these woods had ever been, if not stronger. He would only keep growing and Atka knew though he may need guidance, young M’Halo would be able to inspire by intimidation alone. He could be a great leader….but, would he want to be a leader? The time was now for him to try, or run wild.
CHAPTER 3
The date was August 1st and Kate was in a very bad mood. Her parents had forbidden her to stay at the lake for the rest of the summer and were forcing her to get on the plane tonight headed for Toronto. She had done a ton of research trying to convince them to let her remain behind. She had found a Nanny job for a great family in town who had seen her on the news. They loved her, and her directive to save the wildlife and the woods. They were activists, and once they’d found out who Kate’s parents were and what they did for a living it made them love Kate even more. Her parents, especially her Father, forbade her from taking the job. Kate had found a room to sub-let for the next month at a local college dormitory. It was available for three weeks at a great rate, and was right near the skate park. Her Mother forbade her from sub-letting the room. She was doomed to go back North. Her life had been given purpose this summer. She was energized about the future. Granted, it had nothing to do with the future her parents had mapped out for her and that was a huge problem. They also dropped a bomb at dinner last night and said this would be the last year they would come to the lake. Kate had never known another way to spend a summer. Sure, she lived in Canada, but she grew up each summer at the lake. She was very confused at what she should do. She looked at her parents as if they were trying to do something to hurt her. She and Roger would talk after dinner. He talked in circles. She was even more confused. Roger loved the lake. It’s where he and Sheridan had the most fun together. Why would you not care about that? She needed time, and they were making things go so fast. Why was everything changing so much? There were plenty of tears after dinner that night, and plenty more to come as she sat in her seat on the plane.
CHAPTER 4
The last time M’Halo hung from this vine over the cliff, things were so different. He was commemorating the memory of the day his father was taken when the sound erupted and he was almost taken by the humans. They took his mother instead. He felt so much shame. He didn’t even know if she was alive. He had run off bleary eyed and crying after seeing his Mom bleeding and in the hands of the captors. So much shame.
He spent the afternoon working on the document, and when he’d finished he swung back a few times to get a wider view of his work. When the vine broke on the third swing he didn’t even blink.
“Of course…”, he thought.
He dropped straight down once again, this time by accident and had to brace himself for impact. Crashing onto a treetop he let out a howl as his right shoulder scratched deep into a branch cutting him and drawing blood. Careening down the bigger branches to the ground below he finally righted himself. Does everything he touches have to go wrong, he thought? Is it all going to be like this every day for the rest of his life? Until they come for him, too? It might be too much to deal with….he might be losing his mind. He was in no kind of mental state to be near anyone right now, much less be a part of the woods protectors. He grabbed a huge rock near him and threw it at the cliff, exploding it into a thousand fragments. He saw his mind in the same manner. All over the place. Scatterbrained.
He looked up at the high cliff and in a loud voice said, “I miss you so much….” to the picture of his mother he had just painted.
CHAPTER 5
“I missed you so much”, said Rex.
He and Ha’na sat on a long bench in the upper level of the Big Sky Lab where Rex had been recuperating from his mission for the past 7 years.
Ha’na was ready to move on with the conversation they desperately needed to have.
“Can you tell my what is happening? Please. Enough of the small talk. I have been alone for so long with no idea you were even alive. Don’t you understand how that can affect a….soulmate…a wife…a mother…your son….the woods?”
“Ha’na,”, Rex said very intensely, “tell me your earliest memory of our life together. How far back does it reach?”
“Still, more questions to answer my questions?”, Ha’na erupted? She smacked the bowl of fruit on the table so hard it flew to the windows. Grapes scattered across the floor in a thousand directions. The banana landed perfectly on the window sill.
She got up and was very tense. Peatfield knew he had to be careful….she was once a very wild creature, but, also once the woman he loved. This had to go well, for everyone’s sake. Especially M’Halo’s.
“How good is YOUR memory?!”, she blurted back at him? “I’ve told you everything many times. I never knew my parents, and neither did Atka. I just appeared one day, and there I was…..One day you appeared, and you know the rest.”
“I do…”, Rex admitted. “I know the rest.”
He stood up and walked to the wall of doors. Opening the leftmost door, he revealed a bank of computer screens that were hooked into his tablet. He was ready to talk.
“The day I was…. taken was a very hard day for me, as you can well imagine. I was put in the truck and driven out of the woods. I had been with you in the woods for 7 years. That’s what we call them in human terms, by the way, not moon cycles.”
Ha’na felt a bit more at ease now that she was getting him to talk facts. She controlled herself as best she could. While he talked she went to the window and grabbed the banana, picked up the bowl, and began to collect the grapes. Peatfield watched her do so, and knew she felt shame for her anger. He would never call her out on it, though. He loved her too much. This was all too intense right now.
Rex continued:
“When the truck reached its destination, I was led here to the Lab in the sky. They began to experiment on me, and I thought my life may be over soon. Until,” he stopped and pulled up a photo on the screen of a much younger Rex Peatfield. The photo was cropped to eliminate the other members of his lab team.
“Until they showed me a few photographs of this man. Rex Peatfield.”
He put his hand on his chest.
“Me.”
“So…’, Ha’na interjected with an impatient tone of sadness, “you are not My Mauo….?”
“I am the husband you knew. Here, it is better if I show you what they showed me.”
He began typing on the tablet.
“They showed me video documentation footage of my life, and the work I’d been doing. I was a Professor of Radiology. I had lost the use of my left leg. Cellular degeneration of tissue and bone marrow. I’d come in contact with a parasite while on another mission. To lose a limb would be devastating. The University supported me in every way necessary to fight this thing. I decided to turn back to history and see how the human body had handled degeneration through the years. This led me to the vaults of every DNA lab I could find. Through government grant money I was allowed to create a program that would use our distant biological ‘relatives’ DNA and bone structure as a kind of …scaffolding.”
More and more images filled the huge screens in front of Ha’na. She was listening to her husband talk about things she did not understand. It was at once relaxing to hear his voice and frustrating to follow. She sat back down and waited for him to begin again.
“My team and I came upon this,”
The screen flashed a white background filled with a paragraph of numbers and symbols. Ha’na had no idea what it meant, and she looked at Rex for answers. She sensed he was disappointed she didn’t pick it up right away. Ha’na sat there confused while the awkward pause happened. Peatfield put down the tablet, took off his glasses, and walked over to the window in his room. He seemed distraught, but continued the lecture.
“It’s a strain of DNA found in North America that is the oldest known sample from your…’tribe’. Your relatives…your species.”
Ha’na wondered where this was going, but, the mood in the room had changed. Mauo became a bit more serious, and looked at Ha’na with slight anguish. She was hurt. She began to close up inside.
“Please finish.”, she said.
“We created a technique to graft the DNA sample to the human DNA strain. It needed the intense blast of radiation, which was my specialty. We weren’t sure yet of the order the procedure should be administered, and after much consideration and some scary arguments, it was decided that the radiation would be done in a post-DNA injection bath followed by an incubation period in an isolation chamber.”
“We needed tests, and test subjects. We were running out of grant money, and the Government was all of the sudden interested in our findings. They got the results back as fast as we could find them, and when they saw the percentage of success for limb regeneration and, most importantly, the potential growth and strengthening factors, they moved into Big Sky Labs to get things going.”
“I was about to make a breakthrough. I could feel it, but my lab partner at the time….”, Rex stopped. He felt like he should gather himself.
Ha’na, frustrated a minute ago, saw the pain in his face. Just a glimmer. He always did try to protect her from the worst of life. Her brow softened and she nodded that he should proceed.
“I argued at the time with the Government that this wasn’t done for Military reasons, to weaponize the troops. They argued back about grant money. I faked a report saying the findings were wrong, that we had missed a decimal somehow, anything I could to delay what I thought was coming. Little did I know that my partner had the same idea, but refused to sit back and watch the military take our work from us. The procedure was going to be successful. We were very sure of it but we needed to see what the final product would be before handing it over. My partner subjected themselves to the test without my knowledge. I should have been there, as I was the radiologist. I came to the lab on Monday to find a mess I’ve been trying to clean up for almost a decade now.” Peatfield walked to his desk and picked up his tablet. Touching a few things on the screen, he changed the view to a black and white video player.
“This is that morning. Upon my arrival, I saw the Log. They had followed standard scientific lab procedures up to the point of radiating their cells. You can see me limping to the isolation booth as fast as I could to hopefully find things were not as I’d feared. It was worse. There was no body in the booth. I went back to the video playback and watched in horror as the radiation mutated my partner beyond recognition. The increased size and power was there, but a fit of painful madness created a fight or flight response that destroyed a wall, a window, and our hopes of ever getting this project okayed.”
Ha’na watched the tape as Rex sat crying alone in the very lab they sat in right at that moment.
“There is more, I take it….” Ha’na asked very quietly, knowing what was coming.
Rex sat next to Ha’na. He had tears in his eyes and looked scared. “Please don’t hate me.”He searched for a new file and started the playback on the monitor.
Ha’na watched as Rex and another man went to the table of vials, beakers and syringes and subjected himself to the procedure. He set the radiation bath to a certain level, took off his clothes and lay back for the unknown to happen. Intense waves showed upon the film, blurring out detail between the projector and the subject. Rex’s body relaxed instantly, his head falling to the side obviously unconcious from the trauma being inflicted upon him. He looked dead. Ha’na was now crying. The man beside her watched again for the thousandth time as his chest heaved, his eyes open violently and he screamed. He could almost hear it even though there was no sound to the video. Ha’na’s hand tightened around Rex’s, and for the first time since their reuniting all was equal between them…the pain and the suffering. The footage continued, and what could only be called a miracle and a tragedy unfolded before their eyes. Peatfield’s body began to lengthen, his arms grew huge, hands hitting the floor. His face mutated to match his neck and shoulders, now massive balls of muscle. The other man reentered the picture as the radiation stopped. He helped the now transformed Rex off of the table Finally getting to his feet, he began to look around and get his bearings. He looked at the camera. Directly at the camera. He looked down at his body, took a quick study of what had happened, and leapt towards the screen. The massive claw appeared with such speed you could barely see it, and the screen went blank. Rex stopped the tape and rewound it back two seconds. He paused it at the moment of impact. Just behind the beast’s hand was his face. It was Mauo. There was no doubt about it.
THRILLDABEAST VOL.1
BOOK 8
CHAPTER 1
TORONTO
The house was quiet at the moment. Kate had been in a state of such panic when she’d returned from summer vacation that she’d ‘kind of’ lost her sanity. She’d realized there were only a few short weeks left before her freshman year at McGill University in Toronto. The packing and decisions were killing her and she couldn’t concentrate upon anything except for what had transpired at the lake the past couple of weeks. Why was she freaking out? It was maddening in her opinion. It seemed like it should be a global phenomenon.
Picking up her backpack, she reached inside to find the open package of beef jerky and binoculars. Her mind instantly transported back to the scene of a scared and worried family of …what were they? She thought they were Bigfoot-like. At least one of them was still out there…alone. Where was the other one? (The one she knew… the mother… the one that got shot by the Sherriff?) That Secret Agent guy ended up getting her Helicoptered out of the area before any news crews could arrive. Only Sheridan had footage of what really happened that day, and she’s been trying to capitalize every day on the event without any luck. Just thinking about Sheridan complaining how she should be famous from this made Kate want to hide in a closet somewhere.
Walking through the house mindlessly, Kate came by the office near the den where her father had stationed Starling Development’s business dealings. Roger gained a larger share of the workload every year as his parents began the slow advancement into their retirement years. Kate saw a pair of amber hued liquor glasses on the table where the development plans were laid which always meant the same thing: they had celebrated the breaking of ground at a new site. She glanced at the plans and saw a Condominium and a parking garage. Standard stuff, really. They’d done so many of them in the past few years that Kate knew it would be done before Winter arrived. Kate looked at the location so she could get a sense where Roger would be while she was at college. Just in case she needed help with any classes or, well, anything.
Kate’s jaw dropped.
“NO!”, she screamed! “MOM!”
She knew her Father wasn’t home, but had seen her Mother earlier that morning out in the yard.
“MOM!!!”
Kate ran as fast as she could through the house and slammed through the front door in search of the only person who understood who she wanted to be someday: the opposite of her Father and Brother.
CHAPTER 2
Claire Starling was in the backyard of the house near the flower garden playing around with the dogs and spraying her zucchini blossoms. She’d bring some in later if Todd got home earlier than expected. They could have the rest of the chicken she’d roasted last night after he’d left for racquetball. The leg she’d eaten was perfectly done. Hopefully the white meat wasn’t dry, but it’s nothing a quick butter and chicken stock gravy wouldn’t fix.
Claire saw Kate coming her way, or, more like she saw Kate’s eyebrows coming her way. She let go of the spray nozzle and wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Hi honey…..”, Claire said with a glance towards her youngest child, and then towards the ground in front of her where the mulch begins and the grass ends.
“Mother….is THAT why we’re not going to the lake next year?”
Kate pointed behind her at the house but her mother knew she was pointing directly at the plans in the downstairs office.
“Kate, honey…you know that’s none of my doing, or barely any of my business.”, she said in a humorous tone hoping to nip this angry conversation in the bud.
“MOM! How could they??!! That is an inhabited forest. There is a FAMILY there! How would YOU like it if someone came here and destroyed your house!” Kate was in full on debate mode. There would be no stopping this conversation, and Claire knew it, so she sat down in the grass to give her fiery, beautiful, compassionate daughter the floor. But first, she had to get straight to the point.
“Katherine….my love….I don’t know what you’d like me to do here. The deal for the lake was made even before all of the stuff this summer happened, and what with the attention it gathered your father and brother decided it’s time to capitalize. The lake should be ablaze with vacationers, news crews, attention you can’t buy. I listened to them planning the construction last week and can’t say it’s a bad deal for our family. The boys work hard…our family…all of the employees of Starling Development, really… deserve to make out on this, honey….” Claire was speaking the company line to her daughter, and it was killing her to be the bad guy. She was the easy one to talk to, and Kate knew it. Kate was just about to turn 18, and her father treated her like a child. He loved her dearly, and every move he made in business was with Roger and her in mind.
Kate went down on her knees in front of her mom. Eight years ago, when Roger went away to college, it was just the Mom and Kate show around the house. They were like sisters in some regards. Kate grew fast and she and her Mom shared clothes, liked the same shows, and both thought the guy from the Ice Cream shoppe was super hot. (They ate a lot of ice cream.)
“Mommmmm….”, she pleaded as she held back tears. “You have no idea what’s going on here. I don’t know how to tell you how important this is without making you think I’m crazy!”
“Try me.”, Claire said. She knew this could be a make or break moment for the two of them, and hoped Kate wasn’t right about the crazy part. She was still only 17, (she’d be 18 by October), and could be a bit impetuous like all teenagers.
“MOM! No! You’ll never believe me, but you have to trust me on this….it’s seriously important! Not just to me, but the environment and the life of a family!”, Kate was almost afraid to say any more. Her mom was her only real friend. What if she did think she was insane?
Kate got up, feeling that the conversation could only hurt her chances of being taken seriously. She’d have to do this herself. She was miserable in an instant, and looked at her mother with a pained, hurt expression.
“Don’t do this, Mom…don’t.”, Kate whispered as she turned and ran towards the house.
“Kate honey! Come back!”, Claire yelled at the figure getting farther away. She didn’t know how far away her daughter really was, though….the distance could be counted in yards just now but in her heart Kate was galaxies away.
CHAPTER 3
M’Halo walked home with his head in the clouds. He was sad that he felt sad. Tired of being tired. He crossed the worn path to the river and saw the pool up ahead. There was a duck bobbing his head under the water looking for some lunch. M’Halo smiled for the first time in a while when he saw there was another duck nipping at the bobbing duck’s tail every time he put his head under the water. It happened two or three times as he got closer and the first duck started to quack in protest. M’Halo loved the little fun game he saw and figured he’d give them something to quack about! That mischievous look came across his face as he started to run. He had to be quiet, or as quiet as a 400lb bigfoot can be if he didn’t want them to hear him coming. He reached the bank of the pool and leapt as high as he could. It was going to be a perfect prank and he knew it. His smile was a mile wide as he landed a massive cannonball dive about three feet away from the ducks.
BOOM!
SPLASH!
Both ducks were scared to death as they tried to escape the pull of the humongous circular wake THRILLDABEAST’S cannonball created.
They failed, as the suction drew them down into the center of the pool with the massive monster!
M’Halo came up for air and saw the ducks freaking out. He was laughing out loud with a big grin as the ducks quacked so fast it sounded like an alarm. (Which, for them, it was!) He wondered why they were going so fast. He was just playing with them and it wasn’t like he was trying to eat them or anything. Then he looked down at his reflection and saw he was smiling. He had made his own fun once again, enjoyed himself, and no one got hurt. This is what he loved to do: have fun and laugh. Do fun things. He wanted to do fun things again.
He started to walk out of the pool and looked down stream at the curtain. He instantly turned away. NO. He was not going back there. Not now, and maybe not ever. He was going to go and have fun somewhere. Anywhere. If life was only going to last a short time for the inhabitants of the woods, why shouldn’t they all enjoy themselves. And, anyway; just exactly WHO is going to stop him?
No one. That’s who.
M’Halo headed to the tallest tree he could find and began his journey into town. It was time to enjoy himself the way he’d always wanted. Complete freedom.
CHAPTER 4
The soccer game had been going on since 11am and the home team was losing again. They didn’t have the power or speed to keep up with the visitors and it looked like another loss was coming.
The coach reached into her pocket and grabbed a vegan mint. She popped it into her mouth and looked down the bench. Her players were either silent, not paying attention or eating candy. One of her players was napping.
“Addy,” the coach said while standing next to her best player, “should I wake her up or not?”
Addy looked to the bench at the sleeping beauty.
“Normally I’d say yes, but she may not have gotten any sleep last night. She looked exhausted when she got here.”, Addy said quietly. She looked nervous as she talked to the coach because the other players knew she was the Coach’s favorite.
“Ok, I guess we wont need her in the second half anyway. Unless you think she can score 5 goals to tie it up?” The Coach gave a sideways glance at Addy and a smirk to show she was just kidding. She walked towards the center of the field to talk to the referees about a mercy rule as it may get that bad.
Behind the visitor’s goal in the trees, M’Halo watched the soccer balls get kicked around. He liked this game. They never used their hands like with the other games. He watched as the Goalies punted the ball as far as they could and the others on the grass tried to hit it with their heads. This is a great game, he thought. He sat and watched in the shadows knowing there was going to be a moment to enjoy himself.
He grabbed the skinny tree on his left to balance himself and waited for the right bounce of the ball. Sure enough, one hit the crossbar of the goal and popped backwards in the air. Before the ball had even hit the apex of its arc, THRILLDABEAST launched himself out of his crouch and erupted from the woods.
Addy had kicked the ball and was the only one facing that direction. She saw the beast fly out from the leaves and branches and she froze.
The monster landed on the right side of the goal and the ball came down right in front of him. He smiled a magnificent smile that was as joyous to him as it was frightening to Addy. She’d never seen so many teeth…maybe Shark Week?
M’Halo tapped the ball with his humongous feet and tried to emulate the movements he had watched from the woods. The rest of the players started to notice that something was happening, and M’Halo picked up speed as he headed down the field. He headed towards the other goal and the opposing Goalie’s eyes grew three sizes larger. She began to back up, but realized she was getting trapped inside the goal and there was a monster dribbling a soccer ball at her. Surely this was not happening. There were screams. Many screams. As a matter of fact, there were every kind of scream happening all at once. The high pitched screams of terror. The screams of the word “DAD!” drowned by tears and fear. The screams of warning from the coaches and referees. This was the type of scream that woke Summer from her nap on the bench. She opened her eyes thinking she was in trouble, but found herself alone on the sideline as her teammates flew by her in a blur. She sat up to see if they’d lost again only to see that there was a chance she was still sleeping. She saw a massive mound of brown and orange hair speeding towards the goal with a ball. Summer stood up and walked towards the field, faster with every step. A referee tried to grab her and get her to run, but she slid through her hands and kept watching. Suddenly, the opposing goalie ran for her life and the monster kicked the ball with his right foot. The ball sailed high over the goalpost and into the parking lot where most of the people had run trying to get away. M’Halo laughed at the way the ball flew. That was FUN! He saw another ball a few feet away and picked it up with his hands. It was tiny in his claws, and he knew it wasn’t for throwing. Just then he heard a noise from behind him:
“HEY!”, Summer yelled from about ten yards away. “Like this! Do it like this!”
Summer held a ball with two hands and took a step forward, swinging her leg to meet the ball about a foot off of the ground, and punted it fifty feet high and about 30 yards away.
THRILLDABEAST’S smile came back and he took a step forward, swung his leg so hard it moved Summer’s hair a bit, and kicked the ball as hard as he could.
PWANG!!
The soccer ball had never been kicked that hard before, and on the way into the sky one could hear it start to whine as it sped through the air. It began to curve to the left a bit on its way back down to the Earth and ended up bouncing off the roof of the groundskeeper’s garage.
POING!
Summer laughed. So did M’Halo. Summer reached her hand up to the sky and said “Right on, bro!”
M’Halo saw the hand and the smile on her face and reached out the same way, but he didn’t know why. Summer jumped as high as she could and slapped a killer high-five. She yelled “WHOOOO!” as she did it, and there was a quick moment where M’Halo froze.
He’d had touched a human before, but it was under different circumstances. The next time he touched one he thought that it would be in anger. This was a moment of joy for both of them, and one Summer would never forget. She heard a noise and turned her head quickly. It was the police.
“GO! RUN!”, she said with huge grin, still laughing.
The last time M’Halo heard those words it was a sad moment. Here he was in a happy moment, and the words were the same. Part of him wanted to stay, but, as he looked at the girl, he saw she only meant the best for him. He had made her happy. He could tell. He smiled and took off.
“BYE!!”, Summer screamed.
“WHOOOOO!!!”, M’Halo imitated her high-five noise.
“That”, they both thought at the same time, “was FUN!”
M’Halo ran happily into the wooded area behind the soccer field. He wove through trees and jumped over boulders with a controlled ferocity no human athlete could match.
A mile or so into the run he came upon the fork in the path that could take him to the river or the lake. He decided to go left to the lake area. He hadn’t been there since the incident. The thought of going swimming or maybe seeing if he could grab a quick bite to eat appealed to him. Second Bay had the biggest trout in the lake.
The path to the lake was well worn, (Mostly by him), but the deer and bear families used it as well. He was running full speed when he noticed it seemed brighter than it usually was around this time of day. He slowed his pace a bit and wondered if there were people there…like the people who captured him. He did smell something but couldn’t put his finger on the scent. It wasn’t people, though, so he kept going. Stopping when he came to the ridge, he noticed immediately that the tree line had been cut. His brow crinkled and he crept forward. There were open areas where the woods once were, and the big tree that housed the raccoon family was gone. Impatiently, M’Halo started running again….but faster. He reached the reduced tree line and stood on the top of the hill. He was not ready for what he saw on the other side.
It was a machine, and it was big. Humongous.
Actually, the excavator was more than humongous. It stood so high M’Halo could not see the top of it from the hill he was standing on. It was so wide M’Halo could not tell where the long tracks of conveyer belts poured into. The arm closest to the mountain had a wheel on it with six buckets that could scoop up to 8.5 million pounds of gravel a day.
The round base of the machine was large enough to take up the whole valley of second bay. This was M’Halo’s home not long ago. This was the place he and his Mother called home before she was taken. MHalo began to step back from the monstrous machine, but then thought again. He walked forward instead with an angry snarl. There were no workers around according to his sense of smell. He leapt up onto the round base and began to walk around it to see what was on the other side. His eyes grew wide as the figure of a bird revealed itself on the other side of the vehicle. It was a 10-foot logo of a bird carrying a building in its claws. M’Halo studied it for a minute and then kept walking the perimeter of the base. Reaching the other side, he eventually saw the fleet of massive dump trucks. The flying bird was on each truck. M’Halo was in shock. They had finally done it. The humans had finally ruined his home just as he said they would. He took his giant claw and extended his arm in the air to the side. Jumping backwards, he got to the big bird on the side of the excavator and slashed a scar over it that dug into the metal. He howled into the sky in anger and frustration and jumped off the deck onto the field below. He needed to find the families. He needed to find his friends. M’Halo turned his head to the right and knew where he had to go for answers. Looking up at the peak of the mountain range miles away, he could almost feel his eyes upon him at just that moment.
“Yes, boy. I see you,” said Atka alone on his perch. “Come. Let us plan our revenge.”
The sound of a War Cry filled the air. M’Halo smiled but he was not happy. He heard the tone of Atka’s call to the forest and knew it was time to fight back. He had been built for this.
They will pay.
This was the new way.
CHAPTER 5
“I’ve been on hold for what seems like forever and I’m getting really, really frustrated.”
Sheridan had been trying all day to get some answers about the shipment of her new clothing line. It was imperative that she get the kinks out of the system before next year at the lake. Roger had backed her on the idea and the two formed a company called SHARE-LING INC.
A voice on the speaker of Sheridan’s phone sounded like an unfeeling computer simulation. “We apologize for any inconvenience Ms. Dosela. The shipment of the material appears to be ready for loading and we only await the approval of the manufacturer for release.”
Hearing her last name brought out a bit of the fight in her.
“The payment has already been taken out of our account though…I don’t se why there’s a problem? Please help me understand a little why there’s another level of approval necessary?”
“I can give you the direct number to the office if you’d like to speak with the actual head of manufacturing?”, said the voice.
“That would be amazing, thank you so much.”, Sheridan said in a pleasant tone. That’s exactly what she wanted, and she tried hard every day to get what she wanted. It was an ethos. A mission statement.
“Here you go; I’ve just sent you the direct line in an attachment on our previous email conversation. Is there anything else I can get for you?”, said the voice doing her best to out-pleasant Sheridan’s pleasantness.
“No, thank you dear…have a great day.”
“You as well, Mrs. Dosela. Bye now.”
“It’s not Mrs….”
“>Click<………”
“Its….” Said quietly to herself, “Ms.”
Now alone in the room without a voice to ground her in conversation, Sheridan sat back and saw the email notification with the phone number. She could call right now, but suddenly the window in front of her was alive with the image of Kate running in from the back yard in tears. Time for another sisterly drama-fest she guessed. She pulled her long, straight black hair back in a ponytail and took a sip of cucumber water.
The door opened violently and slammed just as hard.
“Hey babe, what’s up?”, Sheridan said as un-condescendingly as she could. It didn’t sound convincing at all.
Kate blew by at a million miles an hour and only got a glance of what Sheridan was wearing before she came to an immediate stop and turned around.
“WHAT is …THAT?”, Kate screamed.
Sheridan smiled. She was pleased that Kate had been stopped in her tracks by the demo of her new line of clothes. The “Shawly” was a shawl made of synthetic fibers designed to look just like M’halo and Ha’na’s shoulder-mane. It had a sheen of bright gold and an underlying dark-brown/burgundy ombre. Hanging just below the elbow, it gave a sense of mystery to the person beneath and was a style never before seen by fashion. Sheridan had designed it herself with help from a teenager named Amy in Ireland who did the work for free because she was an avid follower of Sheridan’s social media accounts.
“Don’t you LOVE it!? It’s called the ‘Shawly”! (By Sheridan).”
Sheridan giggled at how cute it sounded to her ears.
“Sheridan…”, Kate stopped just short of speaking and took a pause. She looked at the monstrosity that was draped over her future sister-in-law and decided she couldn’t control herself anymore.
“Sheridan. Are you INSANE!?”, Kate barked.
“Whu..”, eeped Sheridan.
“You’re kidding, right? You HAVE to be KIDDING?!” Kate was in a full rage as she said the words as loudly as she could and still not be yelling.
“What do you mean? What do you mean??!!” Her eyebrows went up and her demeanor changed in a flash.
“How DARE you! Who do you think you are?” Kate was on a roll.
“A., that looks ridiculous, and 2., could you BE any more shallow? Trying to MONETIZE an actual sentient being?! An innocent freaking animal that lives in the forest, WHOM, by the way, we watched LOSE his MOTHER to a violent SHOOTING INCIDENT and run away crying while you shot a REEL??!!”
“I was documenting an abduction!”, Sheridan shot back as seriously as she could.
“The whole reel was about your new shorts you psycho!”, Kate yelled back with zero care for what happened next. She was over this whole family and needed to get away from them all immediately.
Kate ran out of the room with her hands on her head. She barged into her room and grabbed her backpack and her plaid fleece and barged right back into the hall. Marching down to the foyer, she looked at the table with the car keys.
‘Dammit.”, she thought.
She turned around and marched straight back to the downstairs den. She walked in the room and saw Sheridan on a Facetime call talking a million miles a minute. Kate grabbed the phone and saw it was Penelope on the other end. She closed the call with a humongous eyeroll that she made sure Penelope saw.
“I need a ride.”, Kate said.
“Are you serious?”, Sheridan said.
“I’m serious.”, Kate said.
“You’re not serious.”, Sheridan said.
“I am @#$% SERIOUS! @#$%&MMIT!”, Kate yelled.
She put a set of keys in Sheridan’s hands and put her hands on her backpack straps.
“Let’s go.”
“I’m not taking you anywhere!”, Sheridan snipped.
“You take me, and you’ll never see me again. Deal?”, Kate said with a look so serious it was scary.
“Oh, grow U..”
“YOU grow up!”, Kate screamed. I hate all of you and everything you stand for and I want to leave. Are you taking me or not?!”
“CLAIRE!”, Sheridan yelled out the window.
“You are SUCH a BABY!”, yelled Kate.
“You’re a child!”, Sheridan said back with a look of disgust as she took a long look at what an actual woman Kate had become without her noticing.
“JUST TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT! NOW!”, Kate pleaded.
The tone of her voice did that crack/strained thing again. This time Sheridan felt the pain of the words and started to bend. Part of her knew she would be in huge trouble with Todd and Claire if she did this behind their backs, but an angry young girl buried inside her felt …something? What was it? She couldn’t put a word on it, but she knew it was real.
Sheridan grabbed the keys.
“Get in the car.”, she said.
“You’re not going like that.”, Kate said looking at the Shawly.
“I am too. There are eyeballs at the Airport. Do you want a ride or not?”, she said with heavy eyelids and a tone of superiority.
“I hate y…”, Kate said.
“You want to be me.”, said Sheridan cutting her off.
“Gross.”, Kate said. She turned around and headed to the garage.
Sheridan grabbed her fanny pack, thought a second, put it back down and grabbed her clutch. It went better with the Shawly, she thought. She looked in the mirror before heading to the car. She saw her Mother’s eyes staring back at her, and her Grandmother’s too.
“Stop.”, she said quietly, and headed outside.
THRILLDABEAST VOL 1
BOOK 9
CHAPTER 1
“It’s imperative that we get him out of there and bring him here to the Big Sky Lab.”
Rex Peatfield was using a soft tone of communication with Ha’na about this subject. She had become distant after seeing the video footage of what Peatfield had done to himself.
“Why don’t I just go back and live with my son again instead?”, Ha’na answered calmly.
She tried with all of her being to stay calm about the man in front of her. Who was he? WHAT was he? Was he technically still a man? Was he technically one of her own race? What kind of being does that kind of torture to themselves? What kind of being keeps a secret that powerful from one they love? Was he ever truly in love with her? Did he really love his son as much as he said he did? There were topo many questions swirling in her head to build a coherent plan of action. She decided she was essentially trapped for now, and that she had to play along to get what she wanted. The one card she still held was her strength. It was all she had left besides the will to see her son again.
“Our son. He’s our son, Ha’na. I want to see him too. He’s not safe out there alone. He’s only 16 years old and needs guidance and parenting, yes, but he’s making too many waves in the area and I fear he’s attracting trouble.” Rex turned on the serious tone of voice for that last part. The conversation was always going to have it’s rough patch, and he could feel it coming soon. The one card he felt he had in his back pocket was his reasoning. There was too much Ha’na was unaware of and he was unsure she was mentally ready for the full dissertation.
“He will be 100% safe here. So will you, Ha’na. You both are under the protection of the Government of the Canadian Provinces. It’s been seven years since they found me, and I know you have no idea about what I went through BEFORE we…met..but I have to get this across to you somehow. It took me years to get back to what you see now. The first couple months were torturous to say the least. I had lost my true self after the transformation.” His hands reached his chest to emphasize his meaning.
“Who is your true self? How do I ever trust that?”, Ha’na asked as she looked at his hand gestures.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am enough. On the surface it looks terrible, I know. The data we compiled on the process of transformation states the time under stress on the table during the radiation equates to the clarity of the subject. Once I came back we…” Rex stopped and knew this might be a sticky subject. He breathed deeply.
“Once I was back up here,” he said, pointing at his temple, “we looked at the data, and used my …’experience’… to conclude the time a subject is under the radiation beam is directly proportionate to the mental transference of the subject. We have done many studies. Clinical experiments. We know this to be true. If I had only spent just another 20 or so seconds under the beam, I would have been Rex Peatfield instead of the creation we know as ‘Mauo’.”
“Who else have you done this to…..?” Ha’na was getting tense as he spoke. There were others?
“No other humans, like myself or my predecessor. Lab Rats and mice. You have to remember, I started this process to help regenerate human bone tissue and facilitate the healing process other than using drugs and multiple surgeries.”, Rex stated very clearly.
Ha’na ignored most of what he said.
“That’s right….the one before you….where…?”, Ha’na asked feeling she knew the answer already.
Rex sturdied himself and sat back.
“I needed 20 more seconds of radiation to ‘see’ clarity after transformation. My partner had suffered a full minute LESS than I had….It was very painful. I understand. That’s why it shouldn’t have been done alone. I feel completely responsible for what happened. As for the whereabouts of my partner, well….”, Rex crossed a leg over his knee, “still out there. Somewhere. It may be impossible to ever get their clarity of mind back with what we now know.”
The two of them, who had so much history, yet barely knew each other, sat quietly after those last words. The room was silent. The hum of an air vent. The fan on a laptop. The heartbeat within each of them was all they could hear and feel.
“Let us go get him, then.”, Ha’na said at last.
“Thank you!”, Peatfield said as he rose from his seat. He took a step towards Ha’na and she stiffened. There was no longer a sense of cohabitation or joy in her eyes when it came to what they had shared. He knew he needed to back off, and played it as if he’d meant to grab his laptop off the counter.
“Let’s leave in the morning. It should be an hour flight. Is your shoulder feeling better?”, he asked.
“It is fine. I will wait on the roof until we leave.”, and with that said, Ha’na got up from her bench and walked out the door of the office. She never looked back.
Rex looked up at the wall of shelves and smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, though. It was a look at the past and how they had gotten to this point, and knowing they did the best they could….. and trying to be grateful for what they’d been given rather than what had been lost. It helped to smile. He was sure of it.
CHAPTER 2
The ride had been a mostly tense struggle to get on the road which was just fine with Kate. She didn’t really know Sheridan all that well and had only driven with her one other time on a post-dinner frozen yogurt run. Kate let Sheridan take the lead on the driving, barely watching the road. She was more concerned with the anger and impatience she was experiencing. There was an unconscious knowledge of how crazy she was acting. This was something that shouldn’t concern her at all, but that seemed to be overridden by her youthful exuberance in doing something selfless. Was that it? Was she acting out just to show her family how wrong they were about the things they do to thrive in business? Maybe, and just maybe they’ll learn. Kate knew that was probably not going to happen. The wheels were in motion and all she could do was make it difficult for them. What was she doing? It seemed stupid now. She looked up to the visor and saw the company logo of Starling Development staring back down at her and began reaching for it to throw it out the window. She instantly felt the anger building again. She stopped herself from making a scene in front of Sheridan and looked out the window. That’s good, she thought. Leave it there. She may need that on the way for inspiration.
Sheridan was a very good driver. She loved the prestige of theTesla Truck, but had decided to take Roger’s Mercedes SUV for some reason. The ride had been mostly quiet so far with little conversation. The Sirius Trap Music Station was on at a medium volume just in case Kate wanted to talk. She was just a kid to Sheridan and the baby of Roger’s family. The plan was to get Kate in the car to make her think she was getting her way, talk her off the wall and bring her back home. There was no way she was bringing Kate to the airport. She took the back roads so Kate would be confused about where they were heading and how long it would take.
“Why are we going this way?”, Kate said finally initiating the conversation.
“It’s actually faster at this time of day.”, Sheridan said in an almost sing-song manner. She flipped her hair on to the her right shoulder instinctively. That always worked. Her hair was another inerited trait from her Mother. Long, straight, thick black hair that reflected light in bands at every curve and slope of Sheridan’s shoulder and neck. It was a badge of honor for her to wear every day. “I took horses with my Uncles down these roads as a kid. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“You rode horses?”, Kate said with an unmasked surprise in her voice.
“We raised horses! In fact, my ancestors would be the ones who tamed the wild horses in the mid-range mountains and try to eventually bring them to the farmers as barter for food and building supplies.” Sheridan sounded proud of this history.
Kate had never thought of Sheridan as someone with a family much less a history. She came across as being so wrapped up in her looks and ‘brand’.
The winding hills started to evolve into long stretches of wooded meadows. The leaves were still green but Kate knew they were going to explode into fabulous colors soon. It had a calming effect upon her.
“So do they still do that? Is your family still in horses?”, Kate asked.
“My family did everything they could to survive. One side tried the horses, the other did farming, and anyone who was left over would head out to look for any way to make ends meet in the reservation. We had limited options back then…” Sheridan’s voice took a turn to reality just as they got to a flat stretch where they could finally go faster than 20 km.
Kate looked left at Sheridan. She saw her profile. She looked back at the road quickly and tried not to think about how shallow she would sound telling Sheridan that she had no idea she was of Native American lineage. What a moron, she thought. It was perfectly evident. Kate looked back at the road and was lost in thought. Her mind wandered to visions of horse corrals and vast farms of livestock and vegetables. She knew next to nothing about the indigenous past of the Toronto area other than the name itself was of Native origin. She grabbed her phone and did a deep dive on the subject.
Sheridan saw Kate grab her phone and thought she must’ve gotten a text from a friend. Her first instinct was to check her own phone, but she resisted the urge. She wanted Kate to trust her like a big sister, and look up to her. She felt like she was doing something important for the Starling family by taking care of the situation with Kate. They’d no doubt thank her profusely, and Claire would finally accept her as a successful heir instead of Roger’s ‘latest girlfriend’.
Kate finished reading the page she was on and was instantly struck by a logical realization. How could she not have seen it before. Without a moment’s hesitation she came right out with the newfound data she’d compiled.
“So what was the name of your tribe?” Kate thought she’d start sneakily by asking more questions.
“Chippewa”, Sheridan said proudly.
“The ones who basically held all of Michigan and lost it to the USA when the British started the War of 1812, right?”, Kate said very smart-alecky.
Sheridan looked at Kate with a sideways glance.
“So, let me get this straight….,”, Kate said. “Your ancestors, whom you spoke of with such pride a few minutes back, were slaughtered and forced to live in fear of their lives by invaders who just took what they wanted?” Kate felt she had a strong argument.
Sheridan knew this was the last thing she wanted to talk about. She knew the real history of her family and had been running from it for years. She had done the work and forged a life away from the pain and the baggage of her reservation and the history behind it. She used whatever she could to achieve independence from the history of the Chippewa. Just then, she lost concentration for a spilt-second and veered into the shoulder of the road just enough to engage the rumbe-strip. Both girls jumped and grabbed on tight. Sheridan instinctively looked in the rearview mirror. Her Mother’s eyes were staring right back at her. She looked away immediately and gained her composure.
“Kate, you’re too young to underst-“, she tried to stop the narrative, but Kate smelled blood in the water and cut her off.
“I’m old enough to read, and if noone is gonna tell me the truth, that’s how I’ll end up learning everything. From strangers! The internet!”
“KATE!”, Sheridan shot back louder than she had been the whole car ride, but did not scream. Yet.
“NO! How is what my dad and Roger doing any different than what happened to your people!? Tell me that? Tell me how they just get to do whatever they want because they have the money or the firepower to outnumber a family that lives in those woods!?”, Kate was getting emotional. She missed Ha’na speaking in her mind all of the sudden. The sight of Ha’na bleeding and her son running away weeping and howling in terror for his mother’s safety ran through her mind again. She slammed her fist sideways against the door of the car. It hurt but she needed to release the explosive frustration building inside.
“They’re animals, though, Kate!”, Sheridan answered as if it was so logical she shouldn’t have had to tell her.
“They are NOT just ANIMALS! I TALKED TO ONE OF THEM!”, Kate was so angry she didn’t care anymore how crazy she sounded.
“You WHAT?” Sheridan was so shocked at what Kate just said she almost stopped the car to see if her future sister-in-law was mentally stable.
The car was silent for an awkward few seconds. One of them had to talk….quickly.
“OK, not really talked but, well….”, Kate was worried and didn’t want to say it out loud because she KNEW it would sound even worse.
“Well, WHAT?”
“It wasn’t so much talking as much as it was ….well…”
“Kate…what?”
“IT WAS LIKE A MARTIAN MIND MELD THING OKAY?!?!”
Sheridan pulled the car over immediately.
“Sher, listen!”
“Are you INSANE?!”
“I MIGHT BE and I don’t know what to do about it!!”, Kate started to freak out internally.
Sheridan looked over at Kate and knew this was serious to her. You don’t go around saying stuff like that to people who make their living as an “internet influencer”. They weren’t known to have large amounts of morals and ethics when it came to classified information.
“Kate…ok…that’s it. We…. need to get a couple of doughnuts and you’re going to tell me everything immediately. Then, I’ll think about whether I’m calling Claire or not, do you understand me?”
“SHERIDAN! NO!”, Kate screamed. Cracked voice again. (It was becoming a thing.)
“Shut it. We’re hitting Hortons now.” She turned the car back on and pulled out into the roadway. Checking the rearview mirror, she saw Grandma Dosela staring right back at her. This time, Sheridan stared back looking for a helping hand. She was going to need it as much as she needed the doughnut.
CHAPTER 3
They were skateboards.
M’Halo didn’t know what they were called, but they looked very fun.
He watched as the younger humans sped around on them in the carved out earth.
This was the last place built by the humans when he was a child. A whole moon cycle it took them to build. M’Halo watched as they built it and then waited to see WHY they built it.
The day they let the young humans into the area was as memorable a day as he can remember. There was so much joy and happiness in the air you could feel a buzzing in your skin. Children screamed and yelled and ran and skated. They fell and got hurt and cried but almost no one cared about any of that…they all just kept running around and flying through the air. That was what captured M’Halo’s heart. They were flying at times. They would scream with joy when they went very high in the sky. The oldest male with the red shirt…M’Halo remembered him the most. He flew the highest and went the fastest. M’Halo wanted immediately to go out and be around the red shirt male.
M’Halo watched the red shirt male from the safety of the woods every day during the hot season. One day the red shirt male flew higher than he ever had, only when he came back down he landed wrong and was badly hurt. M’halo felt they were friends in some strange way. When the human male was hurt that day, M’Halo jumped in horror at what he saw and instinctively went to help his friend. He leapt off the tall tree branch he was perched upon and hit the ground running. As he was about to break the tree line, though, a huge hand reached out and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back. M’Halo let out a surprised yelp that everyone in the area heard. The humans didn’t know where it came from, but they heard something cry out as they all tended to the hurt skateboarder.
“No, son….do not go there. They are not like us.”, Mauo said in his most fatherly tone.
“He is my friend, though…” M’Halo said as he wriggled and tried to escape his father’s grasp. “He is hurt!”
“I know son, but they will help their own. They will only hurt us. I promise you he will be okay.” Mauo looked deep into his son’s eyes and saw how sad he was that he could not do the fun things he saw the humans do. He wondered as they headed back to the curtain if this was just a phase he was going through or if it was something they needed to be wary of in the future.
Back in the present day, M’Halo was now 16 Moon Cycles and ready to enjoy life again. He had rested for a few days after the trauma of past weeks but felt the sun on his mane and with it the fun in his heart returning. The skate park was full of humans having massive amounts of fun. He would wait no longer.
Farthest from the treeline, he could see many of the vehicles they used in the park standing up in a row. The humans were sitting in the shade of the weeping trees to rest. He recalled that day with his father and decided that there was no one that could hurt him anymore than he had already been hurt. He was the biggest and strongest in the woods now. He refused to feel fear anymore. Step after step he knew what he was doing had never been done before. None of his people had been so daring to do the things he’d done. He was a trailblazer. One huge step over the fence and he was on the cement. He smiled with mischievous joy as he walked towards the weeping tree. To say he was walking menacingly would be wrong. He was just walking, but when you’re 7’8” and over 400 lbs of hair, teeth and claws you tend to strike fear into those smaller and more frail than you.
Shannon was twirling her hair in her fingers and watching the little kids as their skateboard lessons took place. She caught something in her peripheral vision and glanced to the left. It looked like a cosplay she’d seen a few weeks back at the comic convention. That person had stilts they walked on and moved too clunkily to be really believable, but THIS guy’s suit was AWESOME. It was perfect! He moved seamlessly and you couldn’t tell where the stilts were at all. She hit Seth in the arm with her hand and said, “Dude…”
“Bro.”, Seth said.
“Dude.”, she nodded left and sat up. “Check it.”
“Dude!”
“I know!”, Shannon said, and she got up to get closer.
M’Halo saw her get up and thought “Here we go.” He didn’t stop walking though. The others under the tree sat up at attention and watched the monstrous figure walking their way.
Three of them said “Dude”. One said “Bro”.
Shannon took about two more steps until she sensed something wrong. By now she should be able to see some mechanics or wiring for the facial movements. Something. But she saw nothing. Then, she noticed a ….scent? A musky, deep woods type smell…like when her dog jumps in the river and lays in the sun too long. She stopped her forward motion and hit Seth in the arm.
“Dude.”
“Bro”, Seth said. Then the same realization hit Seth right between the ears.
“BRO!”
“DUDE!”, Shannon said.
They both froze. Their lives flashed before their eyes and then they remembered the waterskiing incident this past summer and realized it wasn’t a hoax at all.
M’Halo smiled a huge grin as he strolled by the two of them and headed for the spot by the tree. The others got up and scrambled for safety. He reached down and grabbed the red one first in honor of his old skateboard hero. It was very nice, he thought, but then he looked at the others. The green one with the diamond pattern was larger. (Technically a ‘longboard’, which are used mostly for cruising and commuting rather than high flying tricks.) However, it was the only one that looked like it was big enough for him to use. He picked it up and turned around towards the skate park. Shannon and Seth were still just standing there watching him in silence. M’Halo was so excited to go have some fun on the longboard, he had forgotten there were people around. He stopped and raised his eyebrows, embarrassed that he had not even asked. (His mother would scold him about his manners if she were there.) Looking down at the longboard he sheepishly grinned and said in his native language “May I?” and smiled kindly. There were so many teeth visible it was disturbing.
“Dude.”, Shannon said. Quietly.
“Bruh.” Seth said.
“Go, man. Hell yeah…”, Shannon saw the look on M’Halo’s face. There was no mistaking it. This guy wanted to rage out on the longboard! She walked forward and put a hand on his elbow (which was bigger than her waist) and led him to the edge of bowl of the skate park. She ran over and grabbed her board and yelled over to Seth.
“Dude!”
Seth didn’t have to be told twice.
“Bro!”, and he ran over to his board and hurried to the edge with M’Halo and Shannon.
“Ready bro?”, Seth said to M’Halo. Seth put the board down to his feet and got ready to kick off. He looked over at Shannon who did the same. They were beaming with so much joy that M’Halo was laughing out loud. This was really going to happen!!
Seth kicked off first. He blasted down the side of the bowl and in a flash he was hugging the corners going as fast as he could go. He looked behind him as he came to a corner and saw Shannon kick off. Shannon loved the jumps so she veered to the middle of the skate park and hit the table top. Up she went and while she was in the air she flipped her board around her feet. She landed smoothly with all four wheels and zoomed up the other side of the bowl using the inertia of her path to make a standing dismount on the lip directly facing across from M’Halo.
“AWESOME*!!!!”, M’Halo blurted out in his native language. Shannon laughed because she could tell what he meant even though it was just a noise. A very loud noise!!
It was his turn now! One would think you’d be wary of such a moment. Never doing this before…the threat of injury….probably going to fall on his face. Not M’Halo. He kicked off about six feet from the lip.
“BRO!”, yelled Seth.
“$#&+!”, yelled Shannon.
M’Halo hit the very bottom of the lip and barely made the curve! The board took the brunt of his weight though, and he got his bearings after a slight wobble. He began to roll but gravity began to halt his progress. He was disappointed. Shannon looked on as she was wondering what was going to happen next. Seth was still out there zooming around and he kicked a few times to increase his speed and head over M’Halo’s way.
“Bro. You good?”, he said as he flew by the humongous figure on the longboard that had come to a complete stop.
M’Halo saw Seth go by and remembered his idol, red shirt male. He would use his other foot to go faster! It was all coming back to him. He shifted his massive right foot onto the board for stability and put his equally massive left foot on the ground. He pushed off and started rolling. He pushed off once more with more force and gained speed. He began to grin and pushed off again with all his might. Mighty leg muscles rippled as the wheels of the board began to roar! He was an absolute blur in three kicks of his foot!
“DUDE!!!!!!!”, Shannon yelled in the most joyous way. “Check it! He’s GOOFY!”
“BROOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”, Seth whooped and hollered with his fist in the air. “GOOFY!!?”
M’Halo got to the far lip of the bowl in no time and used his memory of red shirt male to guide him now. He got as low on the board as he could and braced himself. The bowl scooped him straight up and the speed he traveled at sent him skyrocketing into the wild blue yonder! He reached the top of his jump and felt something.
“Oh….”, he thought. “There’s the fear.” The board had come out from under his feet. He began to come back down to Earth and was out of options. He decided to let the board fall and save himself. He was shading back inside the bowl on the way down. He reached out to grab the lip of the bowl and just missed it. His left foot hit first and then his buttock took the brunt of the fall. He scraped down the bottom curve of the cement and skidded to a stop. Shannon put both hands up to her mouth in shock. Seth lifted the front of his board and screeched to a halt.
“BRO!”, he yelled.
“dude…..”, Shannon whispered.
M’Halo took stock of his position. He looked at his hands. He looked at his feet. He rolled over a bit to see his hair was burnt a tad on his left buttock. Otherwise, he was unhurt!
“WHOOOOOOOOOOO!*”, he yelled with childish glee!
“DUDE!”, yelled Shannon as she raised a ‘hang loose’ hand gesture.
“BRO!”, yelled Seth as he popped back down on his board and sped over to M’Halo. “That was sick, bro! You’re a natural!”
M’Halo got up slowly and dusted himself off. He grabbed the board and kicked off once more the other way. He went up the table top and back down the other side. He saw the jump coming and made believe he was red shirt male once more.
BAM!
Flying in the air with his mane flapping in the breeze, M’Halo nailed it! Here came the curve of the bowl, and instead of heading straight this time, he turned into the wall and came back down the other side even faster. A couple of devastatingly strong pushes of his foot got him to hyper-speed and he headed for the table top once more. His eyes squinted into cracks because he was smiling so hard. He hit the front ramp dead center and got into the air. He was so high he looked over at Shannon still on the top edge of the bowl and they were eye to eye. He smirked and raised his feet in the air and flipped the board just as she had performed a minute earlier. He grabbed the board quickly and got it under his feet just in time to land. It wasn’t as smooth as Shannon’s landing, and the board was most likely going top need some TLC after today, but he landed it and he let out the happiest howl you’d ever want to hear.
“BRO!”, Seth said.
‘Oh my GOD dude!”, Shannon was so happy right now she had tears in her eyes. “That was so AWESOME!”
M’Halo skated to the other edge of the bowl and stepped off the board. He felt one of the wheels had taken some damage and knew he should stop. He picked up the board and turned it over to look. Seth drove over and saw the problem.
“Dakota!”, he yelled to the freckly girl with the red hair and the toddler under the tree enjoying the show.
“That’s okay! It was way worth it!”, she gracefully yelled back. She’d get a new truck for her birthday or something.
“Hell yeah.”, Seth answered.
The lip of the bowl was now filled with kids shooting video of the fun being had inside the skate park. Noone cared about any repercussions. Noone held back in uploading reels to various social media platforms. As a matter of fact, the energy around the skate park was so infectious that people from the basketball and tennis courts were running to see what was so incredible. If the world had thought the stories of the lake-goers, basketball kids, and soccer teams were fantasy there would be no more doubting.
The stories were real.
He was real.
He was awesome to behold.
He was intelligent, and he wasn’t hiding anymore.
Dude.
CHAPTER 4
“When we broke ground you
were standing right next to the Mayor and I promising me that Starling
Development had your full cooperation.”
Todd Starling was 61 years old but you would think he was 50. He kept himself in good shape because a great person told him that you
can’t depend on others to get things done. Sometimes you need to get your hands dirty. That great person was his Mother. She raised Todd and Kathy alone after her husband Lee Starling passed away tragically at age 26. She was set for life due to his family inheritance but worked harder than anyone, thus gaining the respect of her male business peers of that ancient era. She became Todd’s mentor as
well as the head of Starling Development at its inception.
“I expect a full investigation into the vandalism of my fleet of trucks andexcavators.”, Todd said as if it was written in stone.
“We are on the case Mr. Starling. The entire Detective Unit is on the streets as we speak. Matter of fact, they have been since your foreman called us this morning at 5:30 AM.”
Sheriff Foster knew he was speaking with a man that needed immediate answers or sparks would fly within the Mayor’s Office. Mrs. Foster sat at the kitchen table in front of her husband. He stood behind her getting his coat on. It would be an interesting day out of the office.
“Have you got any leads? My insurance company is awaiting a word from the authorities.”, Starling said, “You can see the need for a rapid wrap up to the investigation.”
“Oh we’ve got a suspect in mind sir. We’re going to see if we can round him up for…..questioning”, Foster said raising an eyebrow at Mrs. Foster, “hopefully this afternoon the latest.”
Mrs. Foster now raised HER eyebrow. The screen of her laptop was
repeating a video from the Skate Park the previous night. The video, and many like it, had gone viral immediately and was being played on the main TV Broadcast channels as well. The clip playing at this exact moment was from the view of the top lip of the skatepark’s bowl, as a humongous hairy hand rose over the edge and clamped down on the hot concrete. Sharp claws dug in and created indents as M’Halo emerged into view smiling wide with teeth that would
scare a sabretooth tiger. Sheriff Foster put his hand on the top of his head moving his hat back to reveal his worried expression to Mrs. Foster.
“I’d like to be kept in the loop of course, Sheriff?”, Starling demanded with a question.
“Oh, you’ll probably know about the same time I do, sir.”, Foster said with a sigh.
“Thank you Sheriff. I take damage to my property very seriously and this little setback is going to cost me some time and money. Have a good day.”
Starling hung up and looked out at his fleet of equipment and trucks. There were huge slash marks across the side of every truck’s STARLING DEVELOPMENT logo, and almost every truck had its tires slashed as well. The excavator cockpit had the glass smashed and the logo had been defaced with a huge ‘X’ slashed across it.
Were he a paranoid man, Todd Starling would think someone was out to get him. As it was, he thought that it was just a bunch of drugged out teenagers destroying private property for fun. He had the age range correct, but the motive was more personal than he knew. He had destroyed someone’s home and they wanted revenge, not insurance money.
Sheriff Foster grabbed his keys and kissed his wife on the top of her head.
“Baby, I have a feeling it’s going to be a long morning that turns into a
longer afternoon into an evening of meetings, phone calls and interviews.”
“’Rett Foster, you just be careful out there and don’t you dare do anything
stupid for some capitalist businessman….”, said Gina Foster in her best head of
the household voice.
“I won’t baby. I won’t.”, Everett said.
“Don’t be too late, either. It’s meatloaf night.”, she said with a smirk and a
twinkle of her eyelashes as she got up and kissed him full on the lips while he
wrapped his arms around her.
“My favorite night of the week.”, he said smugly.
“I’ll be waiting.”, she squeezed him tightly.
“Wish me luck.”, he said with a giggle, “this might get hairy.”
“Very funny.”, she slapped his behind as he walked away.
Sheriff Foster was out the door and jingling his keys as he walked. He jumped
in the huge Ford Interceptor SUV and pulled away slowly.
Gina Foster tried not to watch him drive off, but she couldn’t help herself.
She loved that man and everything he stood for. Turning back to the kitchen,
she walked right into her son Timmy who was standing off to the side the whole
time she was kissing her man.
“Oh! Hi honey,”, she said as she slid an arm over his shoulder on the way past
him to her chair. “What’s up?”
“Mom, I just Googled ‘Meatloaf’.”, Timmy said with his tablet in his hand.
“Oh..”, Gina said with a voice that tapered off just enough to know she might
have a moment brewing here.
“We’re vegetarians.”, Timmy said. “Right?”
“That’s right, honey”, she said back knowing the truth might be best.
“So, do you guys eat meatloaf without me once a week?”, Timmy looked a little
hurt as he stared at his screen, not exactly drooling, but curious.
“Yes.”, his Mother lied to him. “Yes we do, and we’re very sorry.”
“Can I have some?”, he asked unsure of if he even wanted any.
“When would you like some?”, Gina said knowing this was not going her way.
“You said it was tonight.”, her son looked at her like she might be crazy.
“That’s right. I did. Tonight it is then.”, she nodded in approval.
“Even if Dad gets home late?”, Timmy questioned.
“That’s right. Let’s make it a new family tradition.” Gina Foster was defeated.
She knew this was the first of many conversations with her son that might be
uncomfortable.
She also knew she had to go to the grocery store immediately.
CHAPTER 5
“Sheridan I really think you should slow down a little….”, Kate said.
The pair had napkins all over their laps. Kate had chocolate icing on her chin and Sheridan had powdered sugar on the corners of her mouth. There was a humongous iced coffee in the center console with an equally humongous straw poking out of the top. Kate held a chocolate milk with her left hand and a half-eaten Boston Cream Doughnut in her right. Her phone was balancing on her right thigh with the screen open and blaring the continuous videos and reels of M’Halo skateboarding at the park. Sheridan had two full cheeks of Strawberry Snow Timbits.
“We need to get down there immediately Kate!”, Sheridan said seemingly more hyper than Kate had ever seen her.
“So, you believe me then? You don’t think I’m insane? Because when I told the police what happened that day they looked at me like I was completely insane.” Kate looked relieved. She didn’t like being the only one with a secret and now Sheridan could help her deal with what she’d been through.
“Listen,’, Sheridan said looking in the rearview mirror quickly, “we all have things we deal with in life. You and I saw some crazy stuff this summer. Of course I believe you.” She looked in the rearview mirror just to make sure. Just as she thought: no one there but her. Should she tell Kate about the mirror? No. Kate would think she was crazy. She kept driving at a good rate of speed until they came to the border. Goodbye, Canada.
CHAPTER 6
Roger was having a heck of a time keeping his father’s mood in check. Todd knew that time was money, and there were enough setbacks in every development job already. They didn’t need another one out of the blue.
Roger was his father’s shadow, learning from the best. He had been up at the crack of 5:00 am and at the worksite by 5:25 am. He found the devastation and destruction all by himself. He contacted the authorities immediately and waited for his father to arrive.
The conversation was a quick one. Of course, Todd Starling was angry, but in instances like this he knew someone was going to pay dearly for this setback. Expressing outrage at the worksite would expend energy unnecessarily. Better to trust in the Insurance Company and the relationship he’d built with them over 25 years than to show that he’d been inconvenienced in any way.
“What’s the plan for lunch?”, Roger asked his father who was keeping himself busy in the trailer/office.
“What’s our afternoon look like?”, Todd said paying more attention to his screen than the actual question.
“Well, we can’t do much for right now so I thought we might take a ride out of town and do some sightseeing until we get the call.”, Roger said. “I got a quick look at future development site.”
“I’m game. Let me know when we’re ready to head out.”, Todd said with the same absent conviction.
Yes sir.”, said Roger. He grabbed the door handle and his watch buzzed. A notification flashed upon the screen and he took a quick glance as he exited. He stopped mid-stair and almost stumbled out the door and fell. It was noticeable enough that his father heard the noise.
“You OK, son?”, a now alert father said.
“Yeah, just slipped. Thanks.”, Roger said. He walked away at a good rate of speed until he got around a corner. Looking at his phone for the expanded notification he read it in full just to be sure. He had read it correctly. His Mercedes SUV had just crossed the border into the UNITED STATES.
“Son, the Sherriff is on the phone….lunch is gonna have to wait.”, Todd Starling yelled from the trailer window.
“OK, Dad.”, Roger said absent mindedly. What was going on, he thought? He put his phone back in his pocket and walked back to the trailer. It would have to wait.
CHAPTER 7
Rex Peatfield arrived in the loading dock with his gear in tow. The jet would be equipped with most of the things he’d need, but there were always situations that called for extra considerations. A duffle bag or three wouldn’t hurt.
Ha’na was on the roof waiting for someone to tell her it was time to go. She was being as patient as she could be, but wanted to go home. She wanted to see her son. She hadn’t been away from him even a day before this craziness, and now she wasn’t even sure how long she’d been gone. The moon cycles here were different.
Agent Evens opened the door to the rooftop deck and entered with a meek squeak of the door. She was alone and unarmed. Not even a tablet or a phone on her person.
“We are ready for liftoff, Ha’na.” Evens said with a smile. She knew Ha’na would be pleased with the news.
Ha’na stood up without turning around to greet Evens. She started her walk towards the door and never said a word or glanced at the Agent. Evens didn’t blame her, it seemed. She followed Ha’na down the stairs silently and texted on her watch that they would be down in a moment.
Entering the loading bay, Ha’na waited quietly for someone to lead her into the jet. Finally, Agent Ameca did so.
Ha’na didn’t remember the trip to the Big Sky Labs. She was unconscious and injured. They brought her straight to the surgical floor and patched her up. Entering the jet, she had to duck just a tad to get inside. There was a seat open next to Agent Evens and one behind her as well. She saw movement in the cockpit ahead. It was Rex and another man she recognized from the shooting incident. Tom Schteckler was talking in hushed tones with Rex. Ha’na could hear the tone of his voice. He was tense and Rex was worried. Ha’na walked straight into the cockpit area and put her head in to see what was happening.
Schteckler turned around first as he held a tablet for Rex to view. The screen had the viral video of M’Halo and an interview with a teenager who was also a skateboarder. Ha’na saw her son and her heart jumped. Then she saw what he was doing and her heart sank.
“M’Halo! Oh not again….”, she sounded disappointed even though it made her happy to see her boy.
“Ha’na!”, Rex jumped just a bit.
“I want to see, please…”, Ha’na looked at Rex.
Rex looked at Schteckler and the tablet turned so all could see.
The TV reporter had a microphone in the face of the teenage boy.
“The mood around here seems like there’s a party going on right now, but, did you ever feel like there was danger in what was happening?”
“Not even, man.”, Seth said. “The guy was solid. I’m not sure my helmet would have fit him anyway.”
“You seem to misunderstand me, I meant were any of you afraid of being around what would be categorized as.. well.. a beast?”, the reporter said in a slightly condescending manner.
“Afraid? Heck naw, bro. He even asked if he could borrow a board. Well, not like asked with words, but he was super polite about it. And you’re so right! He’s a total beast out there! You should’ve been here. Dakota shot some sick footage of it, though. DAKOTA!!!”, Seth yelled off camera.
“We’ll have to check that out, thank you. And, a question for you miss,”, he pointed towards Shannon on Seth’s left. “Did you feel any fear at all being in such close quarters with a giant wildebeast?”
“Just that he was going to make me look bad!”, Shannon looked at Seth and laughed at the shared moment between them. “What’dyou call him…. a will-da-beast, dude? You sound scared! Hahahah!” She elbowed Seth in the ribs. Seth jumped on the vibe.
“Bro, he’s so not a ‘wildebeast’ or whatev you’re calling him. Bro is chill.” Seth chided the reporter.
“Totes.”, Shannon snapped.
“Bro…Wildebeast? He’s a THRILLDABEAST bro!”, Seth said with an infectious giggle as he heard the words come out of his mouth.
“DUDE! THRILLDABEAST! Dude that is SO him! Nice one dude!”, Shannon high fived Seth on camera. The two of them were so pumped about the name they totally forgot the lame reporter and scurried away to tell the others.
“DAKOTA!!”, Seth yelled. “HASHTAG THRILLDABEAST BRO!”
“What??”, Dakota answered.
The TV Reporter looked back at the screen with a look of complete confusion and wondered if he should continue.
Rex, Schteckler, and Ha’na watched the video footage on the screen of M’Halo skateboarding as the news station ran it again and again.
“I must get home! I must see my son!”, Ha’na said.
“Our son..”, Rex said back.
Schteckler raised an eyebrow.
The cabin intercom sounded. Schteckler was relieved. He hit the button.
“Schteckler.”, he said.
“Agent Schteckler there’s a call for you and Dr. Peatfield on the line from Headquarters. It’s the General.”, the voice said.
“Roger. Thank you.”, he answered. He looked at Rex knowing what was coming. “I was hoping we’d be in the air before this happened.”
Then, he pressed a button and put on his serious face.
“General Byrne, this is Agent Schteckler. I have Dr. Peatfield with me.”, Schteckler said with an officious tone.
“I see you’re on Alpha 12. I can assume we’re on the same page as far as a timeline goes. When can we expect your return.?”, General Byrne said. These were not questions. There were high stakes in the voice from the monitor.
“Take-off is immediately after this transmission, sir.”, Schteckler said.
“We’ll be in touch through the whole process, sir.”, added Rex.
“I’m sure you will, boys. Your country thanks you. Now, let’s go get back that precious Government Property you promised us almost a decade ago, yes? Byrne out.” The screen went blank and so did Ha’na’s expression.
“Government property? He is speaking of my son, yes? Is my son “Government Property?”, Ha’na raised her voice slightly.
“It’s a long story, Ha’na….yes and no…”, Rex backpedaled a bit.
Agent Schteckler stepped in to save his friend from an awkward moment.
“Could you please have a seat in the cabin, The faster we get there the faster this can all be sorted out.”, Schteckler pointed to the back of the plane. Ha’na didn’t move but stared at Peatfield instead.
“Please.?”, Schteckler said once more.
Ha’na looked to Rex for an answer. Rex sat in his seat in the cockpit. He put on his headphone and microphone and started hitting buttons on the console.
Ha’na walked back into the cabin and looked at the seat behind Evens. It was too small for her, so she moved to the aisle and sat on the floor. Evens was going to say something about safety to her but saw the look in Ha’na’s eyes and decided against it. Just then, Ameca came into the cabin and tried to get around Ha’na in the aisle. He looked at Evens but she was no help and turned around quickly. He said ‘excuse me’ and tried to step over and around her. It was awkward and Ha’na barely moved to help him get by. Evens smirked in her seat listening to the commotion Ameca was making. He finally got to the seat next to Evens and buckled in.
One minute later, Alpha 12 was in the air and headed for the rendezvous point.
Rex was completely silent through takeoff. He let Schteckler handle the technical things and he looked out the window at the afternoon sun heading towards the western slope of the earth. He heard Ha’na’s last words echoing in his head. “Is my son ‘Government Property’?” He wasn’t sure it was her tone that hurt more or the look she gave him as if he was now the enemy. He took his glasses off and put his hand to his eyebrows to shield his face, rubbing the spot where his nose met his forehead. He began to tear up and hoped his friend flying the plane was too busy to notice. Just then a hand reached over and grabbed his left shoulder.
“Hey buddy…this is terrible. I got you, man, I got you.”, Schteckler said quietly.
“Thanks, Tom….”, Rex said with as strong a statement as he could make while in the midst of a good weep. He never looked up. He trusted Tom would get him there and there could be some resolution soon. It was starting to take its toll on everyone.
“You’ll have to tell her sooner than later, Rex. I can’t quite predict how she’s taking all of this, so as much as I hate to say it we need to follow the rules of the forest. Be direct. There might not be any grey area left.” As soon as Schteckler said it, he knew it was technically correct, yet completely insensitive. “Rex, I meant…”
“I know, Tom. I know. Stop. We’ll take care of everything. I’ll take care of everything. Thank you for everything, man.”, Rex said. Head still in his hand, now making strides to pull himself together.
“Anything for you, buddy.”, Tom said. “We’ve got about 2 hours plus depending on weather. Let’s just get there first.”
CHAPTER 8
Roger had been useless in the insurance conversation with his Dad so he took a stroll through the work site with the map and plans in his hands. Walking up the man-made cliff dug out by the excavator he tried to recall what the terrain looked like before they started. He knew Kate would hate that. He wondered what she was up to and thought about sending a text. Then he thought about calling Sheridan. The Mercedes had to be her. He wondered if she was on her way to surprise him. That made him smile. He instantly felt better and took the map out. Once he got to the top of the cliff, he saw the trees had been cleared in the valley below almost all the way to the lake. There was one last obstacle on a hill to the North side of the valley. A humongous rock that had been painted white with a black spot on the end. It looked like Snoopy from the comic strip Peanuts. It was in there deep like an iceberg and was going to need blasting for sure. Never fun.
Roger took a turn to the right and saw there was a natural shelter built into the mountain about 100 yards away. He could put the trigger fuse there and maintain safety by running a length of charges on a chain that would detonate in sequence at an increasing rate of power until the final charge at the rock blew on its South side, (under Snoopy’s right ‘ear’), and the bulk of the debris would fall inward and hopefully cause less destruction to the area. He saw his Father do it once and it blew his mind, as well as the mountain they had demolished.
Pleased with his new plan, Roger walked towards the lake. As he did, he saw a huge flying object coming down into the lake. It was a …Raven…a crow..a huge crow…holy! It was an Eagle! A giant black Eagle! It swooped onto the lake surface and came away in a splash with a shiny fish that was an unhappy victim. The Eagle soared straight at Roger and then caught an air current that held it up in the air. It gave its wide wings a flap or three and then turned to land on the rock. It stood there with the fish in its talons. Slowly the fish stopped its struggle and the Eagle stood there stoically. He stared at the area around him never moving his body but just his neck. Roger knew they had the greatest eyesight of any predatory bird. It was absolutely magnificent. He began to get his phone out to send Kate a video of the scene and then he thought about what he was doing. Mom had told him about Kate being angry at he and Dad for the development of the place she had spent every summer. He put the phone away. The Eagle looked his way as Roger made a noise stepping on the loose branches strewn around. Roger froze. The Eagle stared at him. Was he staring at him? It felt like he was looking right through him and miles behind him instead. Roger turned around for a second to see if there was something behind him. Nothing there but stumps and the hilltop. He turned back around and was shocked the Eagle was in flight directly in front of him. He ducked as fast as he could, just barely getting out of the way as the tail of the fish in the Eagle’s talons whooshed by his head. That was close! What was that!!?? He swung around to watch the mysterious bird speed into the sky. It flew higher and higher until it reached the top of the next mountain range. Suddenly it disappeared from view as if it never existed. But it did exist, right? That just really happened, right? Roger had doubts for a split second until he looked down at his clothes. He was covered with fish guts and blood from his right shoulder to his left hip. Ugh. Stinky. Gross. He wrapped up the map and shoved it in his back pocket. The walk to the trailer was uncomfortable to say the least.
Sheridan was driving in the passing lane the whole way. She had been flashing the high beams for the slower drivers and at one point even held the horn down for five full seconds. Kate counted.
“We’re going to make it, Kate. I promise. Roger will listen to me.”, Sheridan said with a determination she hadn’t utilized in a while.
“I hope so, because they don’t listen to me ever.”, Kate said with one hand glued to the door handle and the other on the side of the seat.
“Seven hours to go. Next rest stop is thirty-four miles. You good?”, Sheridan asked.
“I’m good I think.”, Kate said.
A loud noise interrupted the music coming through the speakers. The screen on the console flashed ‘CLAIRE’. Sheridan’s mouth dropped. Kate’s mouth dropped even more. They both looked at each other and panicked. Almost immediately another call came in; it flashed ‘TODD’ across the screen and asked if they wanted to answer it.
“Holy…”, Kate said in a scared hush of a tone.
“Should we answer it??!”, Sheridan said?
“I don’t want to! They’re calling you, not me!”, Kate said as if the words were all connected in a heap of garbled guilt.
“THANKS!”, Sheridan yelled.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!”, Kate yelled back.
Both phone calls dropped, and the car’s music came back on. Sheridan instantly punched the power button and the car was silent.
They were doing 80 mph and reality had just set in.
“Do they even have Tim Horton’s down here?”, Kate said. She grabbed her phone and started searching for doughnuts nearby.
CHAPTER 9
The top of the mountain. M’Halo didn’t come up here all that much, if
at all. He liked to climb cliffs and do extreme sports, sure, but, there
was usually something so peaceful about being up at the top. The
struggle wasn’t exhilarating enough, or the lead-up to the top didn’t
culminate in more than anything than having to go down. No matter
what it was, today, he climbed it with purpose.
He started in the late afternoon after he’d foraged for some wild sweet potatoes. (OK…. maybe wild was a stretch….they were from Mrs.Perrault’s garden. They were so close to the edge and they smelled so good he couldn’t help himself. While he was collecting them, he did shoo away a family of rabbits from the lettuce patch. His good deed as a trade for lunch.) Heading up the slope of the mountain, he had a lot to think about. His heart was heavy today. He didn’t feel like doing anything for some strange reason and just felt like learning something.
Very odd.
The trees began to thin out halfway up to the top and he felt the air get that thin chill he remembered from when his father and he came up here one time. He didn’t recall why they came up, but he remembers it well. He gathered his senses and strove on ahead, trying to clear his mind of the past.
Today was about the future. Today was about
wisdom. He needed to make a plan for what lie ahead.
He reached the top and was instantly disappointed. Atka the great
black eagle was not at his perch. Wouldn’t you know it? The one time
M’Halo felt introspective and ready to learn something the book of
knowledge evaded his grasp. He sat down on the peak, which was
actually above the perch. He looked at the stars. He smelled the air. It really was quite beautiful. Even the glow of man’s
artificial light polluting the sky gave off a sense of
life. Life was changing all around him. His life had changed so much.
Just this moon cycle alone the woods had become more dangerous
than ever. Invaders with cameras and traps were everywhere. They
were harmless mostly, but it made living…existing… a bit more
difficult. He knew it was all his fault of course. He heard every word his mother said to him over and over again in his head. M’Halo wished he could be like her even if just a little bit. She seemed so happy to just be in the woods. She didn’t crave attention or search for adventure. He was different. He knew that now. They had raised him to be who he was, and that was how it was going to be for the rest of his life.
“The rest of my life.”, he thought.
He shuddered a little bit just thinking about what was to come
and how he had little control over what would
happen. He wished he could predict the future and looked to the stars for answers. Just then he saw a flicker to the left in the great black beyond above. It was a shooting star! He had seen one when he was younger with his parents. They both made wishes and told M’Halo to do the same. He was ashamed to think how he wished for another apple just like the one he’d had for breakfast. He remembers his parents both watching the star float away and burn out into nothing.
They kissed afterwards and held each other in silence.
M’Halo watched this star grow brighter and brighter. He made a wish to himself and swore he’d do his very best to make sure it came true.
The star got closer and closer, and ever brighter. This was amazing,
he thought!
“You may be getting your wish young man, but it may be in
a manner you didn’t expect.” Atka said.
“AHHHH!”, M’Halo jumped.
“Haha…”, the great Eagle laughed.
“How long have you been there?”, M’Halo said exasperated by the
shock.
“Long enough. You were wishing upon that star, yes?”, he asked.
“Yes, I did….”, he said embarrassed.
“You may want to look again. That is no star, boy.” The wise old eagle
nodded to the sky. The star began to slow down and hover over the
woods below. It descended into the treeline and disappeared.
“What’s going on??!”, M’Halo said.
“That’s the same man-made bird that took your Mother.”, Atka said as he stared.
“Where did it go? Are you sure it’s the same one?”, the boy stuttered he was so flustered by the news.
“I am sure.”, he said. He watched with great focus as it came down form the sky.
M’Halo had lost sight of it many seconds before but the Eagle was locked onto it’s path.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up, boy….but, no matter what is on that metal bird, there is a better than average chance that it cannot be good for our woods.”
M’Halo was lost in so many thoughts. Most of them were about his mother of course, but the thoughts of his home crept in as well. He thought about the families…the deer..the raccoon… even the squirrels were present at some point in his thoughts. He stood up. He did not know why. He did it without purpose because he didn’t know what else to do. He had no plan. He thought about his mother again. He saw the scene in his head from when they took her away. He had almost forgotten about them shooting him with guns that made him sleep and trapping him. What was he thinking about!? He was getting emotional and clenched a fist. Atka sensed the time to speak was now or never.
“MHalo. Before you go…..I have been here for a long time. My days grow short on the mountain. I will tell you this: those people care not about what they take and what they destroy. They dam the river to power their machines and in doing so starve those in the woods. They clear the trees….the trees who care for the ones in the woods…protect them… and thus there is no shelter. They seem to not know we are here. They do not think we are real. That we exist.” He stopped there. He waited to see if the boy was now a man. He waited to see if the woods had a protector again.
M’Halo was silent. He was scared. He knew this was a test. He looked up at the sky and hoped his father looked down at him with favor and pride. He looked to his right at the Black Eagle and put his huge claw on the bird’s shoulder.
“They are about to find out what is real.” And with that, he began his trip down the mountain and into adulthood.
“I am your eyes.”, Atka said instilling confidence that M’Halo would not be alone in this fight.
M’Halo was into a full speed run down the slope when he heard a battle cry from the top of the mountain. It echoed in the crisp air as he ran by the trees. Above, he heard the rush of powerful wings. True to his word the Great Eagle screamed past M’Halo and headed to the valley below.
CHAPTER 10
“Mom, I am doing this and you really have no say.”, Kate said with a slightly smarmy tone. She had never really done anything like this before and it was exhilarating.
“Katherine Honor Starling. I am only going to say this one time. If you do not turn that car around and get back here there will be serious repercussions.”, her mother said in a monotone that meant business.
“Ooooh…Mom used my middle name!!! I guess I should just poop my pants now!”, Kate said aware that she was making things worse.
“Where is Sheridan? Let me talk to her!! RIGHT NOW!”, Claire was getting fed up. Nothing had worked so far, and she had to start pulling strings before Todd found out what was happening.
“She’s driving Mom. She can’t talk. She’s very busy.”, Kate said with a small smirk as she looked over at Sheridan. Sheridan’s smile raised her right cheek and exposed her dimple. She looked in the mirror at it as she took a sip of a monstrous iced coffee. Cute. 😊
“Put me on speaker, Kate. NOW!”, Claire screamed.
“Mom wants me to put her on speaker.”, Kate said to Sheridan.
“Fine.”, she Sheridan said.
“Fine?”, Kate repeated.
“Fine.”, Sheridan said. “Do it.”
“Okayyyyy…”, Kate said. “Hold on Mom.”
She opened her phone’s screen and connected to the SUV’s audio system.
“OK, Mom. You’re on the air.”, Kate said with a radio announcer’s voice.
“Hi Claire.”, Sheridan said. She looked in the mirror again. This was the first time in her life she felt no fear. Odd. Empowerment from within? She liked it.
“Sheridan, what in the name of heaven do you think you are doing?”, Claire said. She had come down three notches on the anger level from when she was on the phone with Kate.
“I’m going to stop this disaster from happening. Your daughter is a very brave woman and has told me everything, Claire. Everything.”, Sheridan said.
“My daughter isn’t even 18 years old, Sheridan. Don’t you think you’re overstepping your bounds without having parental consent to take a minor over an international border?” Mrs. Starling knew she had an airtight case and waited for a reply.
“It was her idea, Claire. She is a very smart, responsible woman, and she has had enough. This is how the next generation asserts themselves…..by ignoring boundaries and rules. We’re heading to the lake, and maybe we’ll see you there? If you actually leave that cushy mansion of your, of course.” Sheridan knew this was the end. She and Claire would have problems from this point forward, but she was gaining confidence and liked the feeling.
Kate mouthed the word “woof” silently.
“Excuse me young lady??!! Where do you get off talking to me like that?” Claire said with an angry tone.
“When is enough enough, Claire? When? How much do you need? Do you need to take everything? Is the whole Earth just yours for the taking?”, Sheridan stared in the mirror as she said it. She was creating wrinkle lines but didn’t care.
“First off, Sheridan….”, Claire was now at level two angry voice, “none of this is MY….”
“SKYESHAY!”, Sheridan screamed so loud that her eyes closed for a split second. Then she opened them and looked into the rearview.
Claire was caught off guard just enough to leave an opening.
“..doing..and…what…? What?”, Claire said.
“SKYE. SHAY!”, Sheridan said more confidently than she’d ever spoken to Claire.
“My name is SkyeShay Desolu, of the Chippewa Tribe, indigenous to the Toronto area since before your grandparents were born in some European country! I am the last born of the Desolu Clan. My name was chosen as a prayer to the Gods! It means ‘Favorable Conditions’, which is all we wished for, and our last name means ‘Common People’! I was a final hope in a world where everything was taken from us by the settlers, our ancestors slaughtered and relocated! They put it all upon me to bring us good fortune, and you know what Claire?? I failed! OK! I failed! I had no choice but to play along with the ways of the world after my family fell into a depression…into alcoholism….I made my own world. Changed my name. Changed my purpose to fit in and survive.” Looking in the mirror once more, she spoke directly into her Mother and Grandmother’s eyes which now appeared over her own instead of replacing them. A single tear fell down all three of their cheeks at once.
“My name is SkyeShae Desolu and your daughter and I are going to save a family. I will bring favorable conditions to that land and your threats Will. Not. Stop Me.”
Kate was staring at Sheridan. She was scared, and didn’t know what to do. She actually felt bad for her Mother.
“Mom, I’ll call you back.”, Kate said.
The line went dead on the other end.
SkyeShay took a sip from her Iced Coffee and took the next exit.
“I’ve got to pee.”, she said.
“I’m going to check my pants while we’re there.”, Kate said trying to lighten the mood.
“Ew.”, SkyeShay said in a funny voice. The two of them giggled.
CHAPTER 11
Agent Ameca was the first to lay his feet on the ground. They had landed in a field near a river where there was nothing but tall grass. The jet had hover capabilities and needed next to no real estate to land or take off. He took his night goggles out and searched the area. No heat signatures around. No sounds. They surely scared the wildlife away with their arrival.
Next out of the hatch was Schteckler. As the pilot of the craft, he had set the engines to standby and made his way through the cabin quickly to check the landing and how secure the grounds were before he completely shutting down the craft.
Rex made his way into the cabin and looked at Ha’na. He tried to read her face, but she was looking off into the distance out a small circular window. Agent Evens was to the left of both of them packing equipment into a backpack.
Rex made his way by the pair and got to the doorway. He smelled the grass and was instantly transported through time. This was his ho,me for so long. He absolutely missed it. He missed the freedom. The ionnocence. He knew his son was out there somewhere. He turned to Ha’na intending to say something about how serene it was out there, and how glad he was to see it again. Instead, he was bowled over in a flash of hair as she leapt out the hatchway and took off through the field and into the woods.
“Ha…”, he croaked. He stopped himself.
She was gone just like that….you could make out a few noises in the distance, but other than that she was on the run.
“Called it…”, Tom said.
“Yes, you did…”, Rex said back. “Cary?”
Agent Ameca’s face was aglow from the screen of his tablet. “Got her.”
The same chip that had allowed Ha’na to communicate with them had a second purpose. They would be right on her tail in hopes to make this a fast mission with no complications.
The group instantly got into rank file and headed into the woods.
“Okay, buddy. We’re coming to get you.”, Rex said anxiously.
“I’ve heard that before…”, said Agent Evens.
THRILLDABEAST VOL 1
BOOK 10
CHAPTER 1
Roger was alone every morning at the site of the Lakeside Development. Today was a fun one, though. He was up at 5 am, helmet on, and ready to make noise. The blasting of huge rocks used to thrill him as a child. He’d watch his father and the crew get all geared up in their helmets and goggles to head out for the job. He would beg his father to come so frantically that they had a mini–Starling Development helmet and jacket made up for the boy. Roger had to wear his swim goggles until his head grew large enough to support the slick eye protectors the rest of the crew wore. Today felt just like the old days, except Roger was all by himself at this blast. He’d become an expert at demolition while in trade school, and the success of his father’s company afforded him all the experience needed to become one of the best in the business at a very young age.
Due to the size of the rock in question there were to be a few tricky moments in the blast. They only wanted to eliminate the top two-thirds of the stone and leave the part remaining below the ground intact. This would ensure a good foundation according to the local seismologist hired by the Starlings. Roger’s task was to make a layered explosion that would detonate in a patterned succession, thus creating a trench to capture the falling stone and not destroy the rest of the landscape. He would accomplish this by attaching the charges to a half-inch gauge stainless steel chain at varying distances. The charges would also be of varying size and magnitude. The least powerful at the start of the chain and the most powerful at the base of the rock. This would assure that the rock would tip over towards the lake away from the populated areas. The final charge would be lodged into the large ‘head’ of the stone under its protruding edge and would detonate last at a lesser magnitude and shoot most of the rock into the newly created trench. Nice and tidy.
“How’s your slack on the chain, son?”, said Todd Starling over the earbuds Roger was wearing.
“It’s perfect. We had just enough left. It’s sitting about 6 inches off the ground from the tree where I have it staked into…I’d say a bit over a hundred yards East….all the way up to the rock where it meets the base. “ Roger said proudly. “We should have a smooth go of it.” Roger’s phone buzzed and interrupted his thoughts. It was Sheridan. He instinctively went to hit ‘accept’ on the call but thought twice and sent her to voicemail.
“I wish you had a few yards more chain, but that’s just me.”, Todd said. He was driving back to the site from the hotel and was about 20 minutes away.
“This way we don’t risk..”, Roger shot back quickly
“I know, I know…the spray upwards of the gravel blahblahblah. They didn’t teach us that stuff in the 60’s and 70’s. We just made sure the thing was secured.”, Todd chuckled his way through a conversation they seemed to have had before. “You going Bluetooth again, I assume?”
“Yep.”, Roger said as he looked at his smartphone. He opened the app just as he said it and checked for the connection.
“Well, just do me a favor and check the ground wires twice or three times. You can never be too sure.”, his Father asked with the voice of a concerned parent.
“I will Dad, I will….”, he assured him.
“Thanks, buddy. Alright, I love you and I’ll see you before 7.”, Todd signed off.
“Bye Dad. Love you, too.”
Walking over to the tree to check the ground wire, Roger looked at his phone app once more. He saw a notification that his mother had called late last night. He’d call her back as soon as he could, but right now he put his hand on the chain and gave it a good tug. It was in there snug, but it wasn’t the chain that was the important part. It was the red wire that wove throughout the chain’s entire length. The ground wire had to be secured to the iron ‘pin’ on the tree, and just as secured on the identical iron pin at the other end of the chain under ‘Snoopy’s’ chin. If it came off, the charges went live instantly and had a ten second fuse delay before detonation. He walked back the length of the chain checking each charge as he went and followed it up the incline of the ancient stone’s recently uncovered ‘belly’ until he reached the final charge and the ground connection. Perfect.
“Sorry, Snoops….” Roger patted the side of the dog-shaped rock and went back to the treeline. He’d wait until Lou got here to detonate. Should be around 6:30am. Time to see what Mom wanted anyway.
CHAPTER 2
Ha’na was free of the humans and finally back home. The woods smelled like heaven compared to where she had been the last few weeks. She knew she should be grateful that they got her medical attention and healed her shoulder perfectly, but there was also a twinge of bitterness left in her mind. They were acting as if she and her son were their ‘property’. This was the final insult to her, and she would reach M’Halo before they did or die trying.
She knew he must be lonely…angry… depressed.. and somewhat lost in the world. Usually when he would get in those moods he would slink off to this place he thought no one knew about. Ha’na reached the cliff’s edge and looked around for the vine. M’halo always had one tethered somewhere around here. She found it and began to lower herself over the side with the grace of a cat burglar. She smirked as she slid on the vine. No mother would ever just let her pre-teen son go someplace by himself without her supervision. He was predictably impetuous. She followed him a few times, and then would go there on her own when he was out and about.
She reached the knot in the rope and twisted her foot around to find the loop. M’Halo had this vine thing down perfectly. Adjusting herself for comfort, she looked at the artwork her son had painted since she was last here. She was always a bit heartbroken and at the same time so proud of how he would handle his childhood traumas and painful memories. She saw he had been here recently as there was an unfinished scene towards the bottom of the cliff. She tried to turn a bit to see the details better. When she did, she felt a tiny disturbance though the vine. Or did she? These vines weren’t indestructible by any means, and it could have been a knot adjusting to her weight. She waved it off as insignificant and continued to enjoy the artwork. Its increasingly advanced details were fascinating. He was secretly an artist. She wished she could tell him how much he had improved since the start of it all.
The ledge above sent a small crumble of dirt her way. She looked up to see if her vine was breaking and immediately felt the tremors of footsteps reverberating through the vine. Just as quickly another vine appeared and was swinging over the right side of the cliff.
M’Halo had been the only person who had ever known about this cliff, and he was not very happy to see someone else was hanging off his personal vine. Invading the shrine he’d made for his family! He was a blur of brown and gold and he swung as hard as he could to confront the unfortunate soul below. They picked the wrong week to mess with his stuff.
FWISSSSH!
Ha’na looked up and was overjoyed to see her son and yet terrified at how aggressively fast he was swinging towards her.
“M’HALO!!”, she screamed with joy.
“M’HALO!!!!!”, she screamed with terror.
“Wha??!!”, he says to himself. It was far too late to stop, and he was on a direct path to collide with his loving mother. He had all of two seconds to look her in the eye and smile before they crashed together violently.
BA-KOWWW!
M’Halo never got his foot into the loop of his newly created vine, and slipped upon impact down towards the end of his lifeline. They careened on an upward path, and he reached out to grab Ha’na’s vine with his right hand. She held on tightly and let out a yell of terror as her 400 pound son slammed into her again, and dislodged her from the vine.
BAM!
Unfortunately, her foot stayed in the loop, and she flipped upside down as they began to descend back towards the cliffside. M’Halo used every bit of core strength he had to twist their bodies away from the rock but still caught his shoulder on the mountainside.
SCUFF!
They both knew what was coming next. The vine snapped at the edge of the cliff and sent them flying away from the rocks towards the mass of trees below. Together they dropped like boulders towards the canopy of branches and leaves. This time, instead of slipping through the first layer of foliage to certain injury, the trees seemed to expand into each other and create a pillow that cushioned their fall all the way down to the forest floor. Ha’na hit first with a thud. She immediately rolled into a ball and used her momentum to get out of her son’s way.
BOOM!
He hit the ground and bounced ridiculously high for something not made of rubber. The impact sent him somersaulting and he landed ungracefully; not unlike a bag of bricks.
“M’Halo! Are you okay?”, Ha’na said with a slight giggle of giddiness. She had survived a harrowing fall thanks to her friends the trees and had finally found her baby boy. She ran over to him in the bushes and tried to pull him up.
M’Halo looked up and saw stars and meteors swirling around his head. Then, he saw his mothers’ face. He smiled. She smiled.
“MOMMMMMM!!!!!!”, he yelled out with enormous joy.
“My beautiful baby boy! Come here, you!”, Ha’na said as he began to rise from the dust.
They both cried as they held each other tightly and mumbled through their weeping how much they missed each other. The sun was rising in the early sky, and it shone down upon the very trees they had just fell through to safety. One could almost see the trees swaying with the breeze into a slight curve. You’d have thought they were smiling.
CHAPTER 3
The feelings of joy and love did not last long though, as M’Halo led his mother to the lake. She would see the mountain and valley where she raised her son was now a humongous crater. The soil and trees were dug away from the side of the hill to reveal the large rock that stood atop the mountain. Ha’na was shocked to see that rock was in actuality a mammoth stone that grew larger the deeper it got into the earth. Mother and Son stayed hidden in the woods fearing there were humans in the area. Following the ridgeline to the crest of the remaining slope, Ha’na climbed a tall tree to get a better look at the devastation below. She couldn’t believe they had done this to her home. She was teary eyed once again, but these were tears of sorrow and anger. M’Halo kept his eye out for the humans. He would not let them anywhere near his mother. They would be very sorry should they even look at her. Seeing his mother in the trees above, he scanned the area with the machinery. He had destroyed as much of it as he could a few moons ago, but it would seem they had found more. He would be happy to get his hands on it and shred it to pieces. Off to his right and down the slope behind the trucks he heard a faint noise. He held his breath and heard it again, now on full alert. He checked to see if his mother was safe above him and then leapt into action. He practically flew through the branches and stopped on a high tree where he had a better view of the intruders. Through the leaves he could see movement. Whoever was approaching, they were clumsy and not trying to be sneaky in any way. You could hear them moving with no problem. M’Halo crept through the tops of the trees until he got a clear view of what was below. His eyes must have been playing tricks on him he thought. He saw a golden and auburn brown…mane of hair? A shoulder’s mane of hair? He abandoned his perch and dove straight down to confront the unknown.
WHAM!
Two huge feet hit the ground and raised a cloud of dust and leaves around him. He had landed directly behind the subject in question and was ready for conflict. A scream pierced the air, and he knew it was…a female? Their shoulders turned towards him and ironically M’Halo screamed!
“AHHHH!” He was not ready for what he had confronted. A human woman with black hair and sunglasses with a shoulder’s mane of hair just like his?
SkyeShay was instantly terrified. Her hands flew out to the sides instinctively and she screamed noises at such a high pitch that it made her own ears hurt.
M’Halo reeled backwards in horror. Not only was it not another of his race, but it was a human with horrible odors and terrible sounds. Another sound instantly erupted from behind him. He turned to face the next attacker but was stopped immediately by the sight.
Kate screamed with joy at the sight of M’Halo. M’Halo made a happy noise, and then turned back to SkyeShay to find she was also still screaming. She now had a thing in her hand with a blinding light on it and pointed it his way. He shielded his eyes from the light and looked back towards Kate. She had run towards him and gave him a huge hug. He looked down at the dark brown curly hair and smiled. Kate stepped back rather abruptly and looked him in the eyes.
“Wait!!!”, she said. She closed her eyes for two or three seconds and opened them slowly. As she did M’Halo felt the words in his head;
“Your Mother…..I am so sorry!”
Kate had not dreamed up anything. She was speaking to the big scary monster IN HER MIND just like she had with his poor mother.
M’Halo was instantly taken aback. She had communicated with him as did his Mother and the other woodsfolk. He saw the look on her face and realized what she had said. He smiled at her. Kate was confused for a second and thought she had messed up her message. He held his massive claw out to her. Grabbing his hand, she was led through the woods and out into the open. Kate saw the state of the valley and mountain range for the first time and was crushed.
“Oh, Roger!!”, she squeaks out.
M’Halo opens his mouth and yells “Mom!! MOM!!”*
Ha’na is aware of the commotion but was still in hiding. She jumps out of the treetop and sees M’Halo standing with humans. Before she even hits the ground, Kate is at a full run towards her.
“OHMYGODDDDD!!!!”, Kate yells like an 18-year-old girl.
“Oh my GOD!”, SkyeShay says as she films the whole reunion. “She’s ok??! Is she ok??!”, she tugs on M’Halo’s shoulder-mane. As she does, she notices how it’s a lot thicker than her own Shawly design. Also the color is darker UNDER the outer coat and not layered like she had hers made. Instantly disappointed, she takes her phone and sticks it under his arm. This freaks M’Halo out just enough to let out a yell.
“STOP THAT!*”, he says.
“Yikes! Fine!”, SkyeShay snaps back at him.
Kate and Ha’na finally get close enough to hug. Kate is overcome with joy. They are talking a mile a minute in their heads. Kate reaches up and feels Ha’na’s shoulder where she was shot. Ha’na raises her arm over her head to show she’s perfectly healed and better than ever. Once more the woods are filled with the joy of laughter and happy tears.
Suddenly an incredibly loud noise sucks the air out of the woods. The monstrous STARLING DEVELOPMENT excavator, (over 100 feet high with a 300 foot extension arm culminating in a wheel of 10 razor sharp buckets), has come alive. Kate and Ha’na both cower from the sight of it moving, and SkyeShay hides behind M’Halo fearing for her life. As for M’Halo, he’s been waiting days to get another shot at destroying this thing. The snarl comes across his face and this time Ha’na reacts differently.
“Show them, my son! Show them the NEW way!”
Lou, the excavator technician was having a great morning up to this point. The day was all planned out and should be a piece of cake, he thought. The Starling kid blows the rock to rubble, Lou scoops it up. Next thing you know it’s lunch and we clear the way to the lake by sunset. Lou starts up the engines and checks all the systems are running fine. It’s a brand-new machine that was just delivered two days ago after what had happened last week. (He never did get an answer as to what happened to the last one. He was told it had been deemed unsafe and had to be replaced.) Lou grabs the throttle and pulls back just a little to see how it responds. He looks out to the arm of the machine and notices there’s a civilian out on the base of the hill.
“What the??”, he exclaims. A slim young girl with dark curly hair wearing a hoodie and sneakers runs up the hill in front of the excavator wheel. “What is she crazy??”, Lou says himself. He hits the intercom ‘speak’ button and yells “ROGER! WHAT”S GOING ON OUT THERE??”
Roger was walking from the office trailer when he got the message in his earbuds and looks to his left. He sees the problem. It’s Kate!!
“Oh, no…”, he mumbles. He had been on the phone with his Mother for the last 15 minutes hearing all about this oncoming dilemma. “I’ve got this, Lou. Sorry!”
“Lemme know when.”, Lou answered.
“KATE!!” Kate, get out of here!”, Roger said flailing his arms trying to wave her off the mountain with magic gusts of wind. It wasn’t working. She didn’t budge. He could see her mouth moving but luckily couldn’t hear what she was saying as the excavator roared.
“Where the heck is Sheridan?!”, he yelled. “Or whatever her name is right now? What is going on?”
As Roger came closer to the top of the hill, he could see something moving on the excavator arm. It was a huge mass of hair and teeth, all orange and brown.
“Oh, no…..”, he said. ‘NONONONONONO!!” Roger could yell and scream all he wanted but there was no stopping M’Halo. He was a blinding blur of arms and claws tearing at cables, snapping wires, shredding housings and having the time of his life. Kate stood there laughing as she watched him go.
“CALL DAD! CALL DAD!”, Roger yelled into his phone. He ran as fast as he could to the excavator’s cockpit and opened the door. Lou just stared out the window at what was happening. “Let me in!”, Roger barked at him. Lou backed away from the controls. Roger began to fiddle with the display and pulled as hard on the arm’s joystick as he could. The arm struggled to move. It had been damaged, but it was now making horrible noises that sounded dangerous. M’Halo was so focused on destruction that he didn’t notice the difference. Roger looked out the window and hoped the arm would extend further and knock the monster off a hundred feet in the sky. He leaned into the window a little more to get a better view. The window instantly turned dark. Something had jumped on the outer deck of the cockpit! It stood up and raised its arm to strike the window.
“RUN!”, Roger yelled to Lou.
“Wherewherewhere…????!!!”, Lou stammered as he tried to exit the tiny room.
SMASH!!
SMASH!
SMASH SMASH!!
Ha’na had seen enough. She was not going to let her son get hurt by these people. They were about to find out about the NEW way.
The black SUV had STARLING DEVELOPMENT emblazoned across the top of its windshield. It was closely followed by a silver POLICE INTERCEPTOR SUV. They both stopped with a chirp of their tires and the doors opened up. Todd Starling and Sheriff Everett Foster ran at full speed to what could only be described as mayhem. Todd saw Kate on the crest of the hill next to the rock. He knew full well that there was a thousand pounds of explosives on the other side of that ridge and his little girl was in serious danger. Todd headed full steam up the hill towards her yelling for her to get down, but she couldn’t hear him. Unaware of the danger. In an act of defiance, Kate climbed higher upon the rock.
“I WILL NOT LET YOU DESTROY THIS LAND ANY MORE!!!”, she screamed. She was getting overly emotional watching her Dad run after her. She knew she was in trouble, but she also knows she is right!! Todd Starling reached out his hand to his daughter and begged her to get down.
Sheriff Foster could not believe his eyes. There’s one monster on the arm of the excavator, and one on the deck of the excavator. He looks to the right and thinks he sees a third monster behind a truck, but…it’s a woman with a phone?!
“Oh, wonderful…!”, he says sarcastically.
Foster unclipped his holster and reached down for his gun. He saw a man eject himself from the excavator cockpit and another running around the back side of it.
“DO SOMETHING!!!’, screams Roger. “DO SOMETHING!!! NOW!!”
Sheriff Foster looked for the more imminent threat. The one on the arm isn’t near anyone, but the one on the deck of the cockpit was most definitely threatening to kill the two men inside. He raised his pistol and takes aim. Before he could pull the trigger, a voice startled him from behind.
“STOP!”
Dr. Rex Peatfield got here as fast as he could. He had been tracking Ha’na as she searched for M’Halo but was put off course by her fall from the cliff. It cost him precious minutes, but he’d made it in time.
“NO SHOOTING!”, Rex yelled with an air of importance and fear for Ha’na’s life.
Foster was shocked. He paused with his finger on the trigger and now pointed it at Peatfield. Behind Rex were the agents that Foster had met briefly at the motel last summer. They were dressed differently, but it was them all right. Foster didn’t know what to do, so he took another look behind him. M’Halo was shrieking and tearing apart Starling’s machines while Ha’na hacked away at the control panel of the cockpit. Foster took aim at her.
“OH.
MY.
GODDDDD!”, SkyeShay yelled while she filmed the Sheriff. He looked at her with concern and wondered why she was freaking out.
He looked back to Ha’na, but before he could pull the trigger, a massive hand came from over his head and grabbed him by the wrist. It lifted him in the air like a toy on a string.
“I SAID NO SHOOTING!”, said a deeper voice.
Sheriff Foster dangled in the air. He turned his head to see the one they called Mauo. Scraps of clothing strangled part of his wide shoulders and he now stood at 7 feet tall. In his left hand he held the glasses of Rex Peatfield like a plaything.
“What in the name of heaven..?”, Foster whimpered. He dropped his gun and Mauo threw him in the other direction.
Mauo was ready to run and stop Ha’na from doing any more damage when the excavator violently tore apart at the base of the arm and the terrifying wheel began to fall out of the sky. M’Halo triumphantly raised his hands and howled. Then he realized he was going down with it! He ran to the middle of the arm away from the blades but didn’t make it.
SKA-BLAMMMM!
The arm came down on the base of the hill with such force that it shook the whole mountain. Kate, still atop of Snoopy Rock, was immediately thrown off balance and lost her footing.
“AHHHHHHH!!” she screamed.
“NO!”, yelled Ha’na.
“KATE!!!”, screamed SkyeShay reaching out for the arms of Roger.
“SIS!”, Roger screamed. He started running towards the hill but it was too far away.
M’Halo had a running start and hit the ground rolling as he landed from his jump off the arm. He looked up and saw Kate start to disappear over the edge.
“GO SON!”, pleaded Mauo.
Kate’s left foot was the last thing to lose contact with the rock. She was on her way down headfirst and backwards into the deep pit below. Todd Starling lurched forward to stop her from falling.
M’Halo knew he had only one shot!
Going at full speed, he has to
STRIKE! The big rock with his left foot!
LEAP! As high over the peak of the rock as he can!
DIVE! Like an arrow through the sky!
SNAG! Kate’s right arm by the wrist!
PULL! Her up past him in mid-air!
TWIST!
EXTEND! EXTEND!
Now TWIST! ROLL!
WHAMM!
M’halo’s back hit the ground so hard he knocked the wind out of himself and lost consciousness. Kate fell directly on top of him. Her dark brown curly hair was in his face as he lay there lifeless. Kate was so panicked she thought she was still falling and couldn’t focus on what had happened. She tried to get up, but her arm was torn out of its socket and she let out a cry of severe pain.
“KATE!!”, Todd Starling yelled. “GET UP!!! KATE!!”
(10)
His worst nightmare was coming true right in front of his eyes. M’Halo had saved his daughter from certain life-threatening injuries, but when he landed the impact severed the chain of explosives from their ground wires!
(9)
Kate had less than ten seconds to live and Todd Starling was helpless!
(8)
“NOOOOOO!!!!”, he screamed as he tried to get down to help her. He knew it was hopeless, but he had to try and save his baby girl!
(7)
Kate looked up at her Father and smiled.
“I’m okay, Dad! He saved me!!”
(6)
“IT’S GONNA BLOW GO GO GO GO!!!!”, he yelled at her.
(5)
She was so disoriented and in shock it was no use. She couldn’t get up.
Just then,
(4)
a black blur in a stream of wind swooped out of the sky. Todd Starling ducked after he heard the noise. He saw the chain of explosives rise off the ground like a miracle.
“THE EAGLE!!” Roger screamed.
“ATKA!”, Ha’na gasped.
“ATKA!!!”, Mauo bellowed. “NOOO!!!” He had reached the summit of the hill with the Sheriff in time to see the great bird rise into the sky.
(3)
Atka, the brave elder of the woods, gave all he had with his mighty wings but the chain was too heavy for him and he dipped lower with each flap.
“NOOO….”, cried Ha’na seeing his descent.
But just then, with her heart about to break once more, two black blurs came out of nowhere to grab the chain on each side of him. The three mighty eagles flew strong as a team and rose above the trees.
(2)
“ATKA!!!”, Mauo shrieked. “LET GOOOO!!!!”
(1)
The Eagles reached the edge of the lake and simultaneously dropped the chain. It began to go off one by one and then hit the water’s surface with a thunderous
KABOOOOOOOOM!
The majestic birds flew high as the sun to evade the detonation. Ha’na almost fainted from the relief. Everyone had miraculously survived. Mauo ran down the side of the hill to see what had happened to M’Halo. Roger and SkyeShay followed the huge hairy monster. They couldn’t believe that they did, but they followed just the same.
Todd Starling watched the spray of water settle back down into the lake as he held his little girl in his hands. Sobbing, he couldn’t believe what just happened. He held her and cried.
Mauo came closer and knelt next to his son.
“M’Halo! Son! M’Halo!”, he held him by the shoulders. The sleeping giant began to wake. His eyes opened a crack and he tried to pick his head up. It was a struggle. He grabbed on to the nearest thing he could reach and it just happened to be his father’s hand. He tried pulling himself up again, and this time when he did Mauo grabbed his neck and slowly raised his head. “Son, are you okay?”, he said just as worried as the man next to him with his daughter.
M’Halo sat up and bowed his head between his legs. He was still woozy and needed to sit there for a bit to get his bearings.
Roger and SkyeShay came over the ridge and saw that Kate was smiling and that Todd was crying.
“Dad! The Eagle! I told you it wasn’t a crow!!!, Roger yelled as he fell down the slope almost landing on M’Halo. “Kate! I thought you were a goner! OHMYGOD!!”
“He saved me!”, she pointed at M’Halo who was now starting to hear words again.
“Thank you so MUCH!!”, Roger said to M’Halo. He slapped his hand on M’Halo’s back as he said it and M’Halo yelped in pain.
“ROWRP!”
“Oof, sorry….”, Roger said sheepishly.
Mauo grabbed his son gently by the arm. He raised it to see if anything was broken. M’Halo groaned a little, but it seemed like he might be okay. The boy looked up and to his left to see who he was with. He looked back down and then looked again to his left. He was so disoriented that he didn’t realize what was going on until his mother came over the hill.
“YOU’RE OKAY??!!?”, she screamed. She jumped down near her baby boy and he heard her voice. It made him happy.
“Mom.”, he whispered in her ear. “I’m okay.”
He hugged her and she hugged him back even harder. It hurt but he didn’t care. He held on to her tightly and then opened his eyes. There was a figure standing over them that seemed familiar but the sun was behind it so he couldn’t make out exactly who it was. He raised his hand to shield his eyes and seemed confused again.
“D….Dad?”
“Hello, son.”, Mauo reached down and patted M’Halo’s head gently.
“Mom, am I ….am I dead?”
“No, son…we are all very much ALIVE!” She had tears in her eyes as she said it and gave his hair a tousle.
“How? HOW???!!”, M’Halo began to tear up. He felt the presence of non-family members around him but did not care. He started to cry ugly weeping tears as Mauo pulled him close. “How?!?! How…”
M’Halo passed out in his father’s arms. He couldn’t handle it.
THRILLDABEAST VOL 1
BOOK 11
CHAPTER 1
Kate’s shoulder was the main thing that everyone was worried about.
M’Halo had saved her by pulling her away from the ground before she hit, but he had to use every bit of strength he had while in mid-air. This didn’t leave much room for error and there was no time to be gentle. He pulled much too hard for a fragile human shoulder. The MRI showed a tear of the labrum, a ruptured bursa sac, a detached deltoid muscle, and a torn rotator cuff. The X-Rays revealed the acromion process, (the tip of the scapula that holds the ball of the humerus bone in place), had snapped off. It was not a clean break and it would need to be re-attached with a metal housing that would be screwed in place, hopefully grafting back onto her shoulder blade. There would be loads of pain in her scapula and humerus bones from the trauma. Agents Evens and Ameca were on hand in the galley tending to her needs. She’d need medication immediately.
Rex Peatfield was the right person to have on their side. Just an hour before he had changed miraculously back into Mauo, husband of Ha’na and father of M’Halo. (SkyeShay had been watching the video she took on repeat ever since. She even asked him if he wanted to see it.) Once the turmoil had stopped and they’d realized there was an injury to the young girl, his human instincts took over and he was back to being an Orthopedic Surgeon. Ha’na was disturbed by the sight of his transformation. M’Halo thought it was radical and wanted to ask if this was something he could also do, but the look on his mother’s face told him to ask in private. Later.
Much later.
Todd Starling had called his wife Claire and filled her in on what she had missed. His phone was now in Kate’s possession as she was on a video chat with her Mom and reassuring her.
“Everything is fine, I’m fine, and everything is going to be fine…..but….”, she stopped and looked at her father, “Mom….Dad HAS to stop the construction and put the valley back together.”
“Kate…”, her father said, “do you know how big of a loss that would be for us?”
“Dad, are you seriously sitting here inside a JET from the Canadian Government with A MOTHER AND SON BIGFOOT, (oh, AND the father too, no offense Dr. Peatfield)…. an ACTUAL FAMILY that lived in those woods, not even counting all the other creatures that lived there, and you DESTROYED. THEIR. HOME! Don’t you get it? THAT’S BAD, DAD! BAD!” Kate was getting riled up. She felt woozy after the tirade, though, and sat back in the chair hoping no one would talk to her for a minute because she felt like she was going to pass out if she had to speak.
“Honey….”, Todd said as he held her other elbow, “I would never have purposely done any of this had I known the severity of it. Surely you all have to understand it was just business.” He looked over at the humongous teenage bigfoot with the snarling teeth and sharp claws sitting next to his bigfoot mother. She did not look happy. Todd couldn’t tell if M’Halo was happy or not….he seemed to always look like he was about to eat something.
Or someone.
“Sir,” Rex chimed in, “could I interject with an idea?”
“Of course, Doctor”, Todd gladly changed his focus to Rex.
“How about a nice ‘tax write-off/reservation/game refuge’ type thing?”, Rex said knowing he was hitting all the bullet points.
“But…”, Todd butted in, “that still costs us the money that we’ve already spent. And would cost even more for the upkeep and maintenance.”
“Dad, you’d be a hero and not the zero.”, Kate said. She was dozing off and had little to no filter left. Agent Ameca had shot her up with some morphine which seemed to be taking effect.
“Jeez, thanks honey!”, her father smirked at her wisecracking. He rubbed her head with his hand and looked at Rex. “Doc, thanks for hooking her up with some prime health care. Are you sure you can take care of the surgery down here? I could fly her back to Toronto tonight….just say the word.”
“I’ll be glad to do it right here. Quicker the better.”, Rex put out his hand.
Todd Starling shook Rex’ hand and the two men began talking about the surgery and what it would entail. They left the med lab and walked outside into the field.
Roger and SkyeShay were in the cockpit with their devices charging from the dashboard of the jet. SkyeShay had been on the video editing app for the first half hour she got in the seat and was answering emails for the next ten minutes before Roger had to break the ice on the matters at hand.
“So….”, he said in a leading tone that begged for her attention, “I talked with Mom this morning before the insanity started. Can we maybe talk about the whole name thing here, or what?”
SkyeShay was buried in weeks of missed emails concerning her commercial projects when Roger started talking, but she knew this was coming eventually. She closed an app or two…took a sip of water…took a breath….put both of her hands on each armrest and said,
“Sure…what’s up?”
“Well, what’s up with you?”, Roger said. This was like tennis, and he was playing against a brick wall.
“Nothing.”, she said.
SkyeShay looked down at her Shawly and felt a bit embarrassed about her actions over the last 36 hours. She knew she had messed up royally and it was time to pay the piper. Kate’s injury alone could be blamed on SkyeShay’s impetuous act of rebellion.
“Listen… Roger…I know this sounds stupid and I know I’m not acting like I usually would, but, you have to understand….I’m not like you. Or your family. You and I met at a party and I was with the girls…..I’ve been playing a game with my life for so long and…. I kind of got lost in it. I know it seems like I’m making excuses, but, well… my family is… well….a lot like theirs.” She pointed at M’Halo and Ha’na who were eating food out of a vacuum pack provided by Agent Schteckler. (Ha’na was not happy. M’Halo thought it was cool and finished his mother’s packet.)
“Rog…There’s a reason you’ve never met my family. We became wanderers after the land was stolen from us and our tribe…our family never recovered. I had to become someone new to survive at a young age, and that’s the woman you met. And seemed to enjoy being with…I’m sorry if this is all sounding insane.” SkyeShay’s phone was going a mile a minute just like she was…the buzzing and the notifications flashing on her screen were interrupting her speech along the way, but she never looked down at it.
Roger saw the commitment she was putting into the conversation. He knew his family was in line for some sort of apology from her, but suddenly sitting and talking to this more vulnerable version of his girlfriend made it harder to discern just who the bad guys were. While she spoke, he took a look at Kate who had finally fallen asleep. He stared at M’Halo. He immediately got caught staring at Ha’na. He watched the two agents dutifully going about their jobs. All the while, he was listening to his girlfriend speak to him as if he was going to sue her for damages. It made him realize how quickly things had changed, and how grateful he should be to have the chance to evolve. She had to evolve to survive. If she hadn’t, they almost certainly wouldn’t have met. He turned back to her and looked her straight in the eyes. Roger took her hand from the armrest. He looked down at her lips for a millisecond, and then gathered his composure and went back to her eyes.
“Hi.”, he said completely seriously.
“My name is Roger Starling. What’s your name?”
SkyeShay wasn’t done explaining herself but stuttered to a stop and went silent. She saw the look in Roger’s eyes and saw he was being serious. She felt self-conscious for a brief second or two, but turned herself around in her chair to face him a bit more.
“My name is SkyeShay….SkyeShay Desolu. It’s nice to meet you Roger.”, and then she giggled just enough to make it fun again inside the cockpit of the Alpha 12.
“I know we’ve just met, but I think I love you, SkyeShay…” He smiled so wide his eyes were almost closed. You could see the emotions having their way with him though, as his face reddened from the rush of the romantic moment that might be occurring in the next few seconds.
“Roger….”, she stammered, and her lip trembled. She saw him looking at it and got even more embarrassed. “I’m so sor…”
“Shhh…”, he said and leaned over to kiss her softly. His tears fell straight down. Hers slid over her cheekbones to the sides. Their senses amplified and intertwined until they could almost hear each other’s breathing stop. They were to the point of feeling faint from lack of oxygen. Neither seemed worried. They’d been through a lot today and seen some crazy things happen. They’d learned some things and felt ripples through the roots of three separate families. It was time to grow up. It was time to take responsibility. It was their time, and they would savor every second from this point forward.
CHAPTER 2
“We have nowhere else to go, Mom…we have to go with them.”, M’Halo said.
They were now outside the jet. Ha’na couldn’t stand being cooped up anymore. M’Halo had just finished off a bag of Kale chips that he’d found when he’d opened a door near his seat on the jet. He really wanted to go for a ride in the jet, but, again, his mother was stone faced and ready to leave the ‘flying cage’ as she called it.
Ha’na was watching as Rex and Todd talked over their plans. She knew that Rex had plans for M’Halo and herself. Wary of any movements the agents or Rex might make, her main objective was to get M’Halo as far away from the jet as possible without causing a scene. They deserved to be free, and she didn’t feel that Rex shared that same sentiment.
Just then SkyeShay burst from the plane in tears. Ha’na could sense that they were good tears, but M’Halo was afraid of what was happening with her. He was already a little freaked out by her and her light beam device, and now here she was doing something else that scared him.
“MR. STARLING! MR. STARLING!!”, she wailed as she tried to walk through knee-high grass in her wicker mules. Todd Starling was deep in a conversation with Rex about his daughter’s condition and had forgotten SkyeShay was even in the jet.
“Sheridan? What’s the matter? Rog?”, he said.
Roger looked like he had been in hysterics just moments before and could only gesture towards his girlfriend in the ‘Ask her, not me…” manner.
“Hi, again.“, SkyeShay said to Dr. Peatfield, “Please excuse me for a moment. I heard you saying before that there could be a land trust and game refuge built at the lake?”
“That’s correct. There would be an initial loss to the company, but in the end, what with the public perception of a Starling Development Game Reservation, I’d think the rewards far outweigh the risks. Why do you ask?”, Rex said to all within earshot.
“Rog?”, Todd repeated. He was now looking to Roger for an explanation as to why his girlfriend was taking the lead on something so far out of her league. Roger just looked at his father, raised both eyebrows and pointed at SkyeShay’s phone.
“Mr. Starling….Todd…”, she reached out her hand to greet him formally. Todd had known Sheridan for almost six months now, and was dumbfounded at what was happening. He was wondering if it was happening at all. He again glanced at Roger who avoided his gaze. “Hi. My name is SkyeShay Desolu. I’m a descendant of the Chippewa Tribe indigenous to the Toronto region.”
“You’re who…?”, Todd said.
Roger was dying inside, but he held it together out of respect for SkyeShay.
“Sir, I’ve just received an email from my designer in Ireland saying the production of my line of clothing…well…”, she fluffed out her arms to show the Shawly she was wearing. It fell back in place beautifully and she watched for Starling’s reaction to the garment. “It’s been halted due to lack of sufficient materials to manufacture them.”
“Oh, no…”, Todd said, and raised an eyebrow. Just one. The move did not go unnoticed by Roger who again had to stifle a laugh at his father’s expense.
“Yes, sir, but there IS good news. You see….”, and with that SkyeShay pulled up another email from her inbox. “those materials were needed for my OTHER project, which I had completely forgotten about.” She loaded a photo from the email attachment and showed the screen to Starling and Peatfield. Both men opened their eyes and looked at Roger and SkyeShay.
“What is that?”, said Todd.
“Is that what I think that is?”, said Rex. He looked over Roger’s shoulder at M’Halo.
“It IS! Last summer I started brainstorming ways to monetize the happenings at the lake. It was SO crazy what was going on and I knew there had to be a way to “capitalize” upon it. I’d always heard you and Roger use that word when we were eating dinner and decided that I should try and be productive, too, like you both are. One of my inventions was this,”. She once again raised her arms to demonstrate the Shawly, “but, the other was THIS. A PLUSHIE to sell next year at the lake for all of the people searching for our furry friend back there!” She pointed with her thumb at M’Halo and Ha’na but put her other hand in front of her thumb to hide her actions from the pair of bigfoot. (They saw it anyway and wondered what was going on.)
“Dad,”, Roger finally spoke up. It’s been selling like hotcakes in Japan and Australia and has finally hit Europe. SkyeShay and I are officially millionaires.” He looked at her and put his hand on the back of his head and let out a huge exhale. SkyeShay jumped into his arms, and they kissed so loudly Rex was uncomfortable. He began to step away from the conversation. Todd needed to stop them and butted in.
“Rog….you invested?”, he said with a look of disbelief that was on the way to disappointment.
“I did, Dad. It seemed like a sure thing at the time, and we were all reeling from the craziness of what happened. She seemed like the only one seeing clearly in a businesslike manner.” Roger put both hands on his hips and stood tall. He looked at SkyeShay and said, “Go on, Hon.” “Well, I would like to propose a partnership between STARLING DEVELOPMENT and SHARELING INC. to save the valley and create the Land Reservation to give these folk back their home! I know what it’s like to be discarded from society as a people and it would be the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever attempted in my whole life. Roger is on board, and we just need to talk it over with you and Claire.” SkyeShay put both hands together on Todd’s hands in a gesture of togetherness.
Todd Starling looked at her speechless. He looked at Roger. He looked at M’Halo and Ha’na who were being approached by Rex a few yards away. His shoulders lowered a bit and he smiled at the lovers in front of him and said, “Let’s go talk.”
“EEEEE!”, SkyeShay said. She jumped on Todd and gave him a huge hug. Roger finally laughed out loud, and his father cracked a huge grin at him. M’Halo heard the noise and was startled again.
“What is wrong with that one?”, he asked his mother.
“I will never understand them, my son.”, she said.
CHAPTER 3
Kate had been up for about forty-five minutes. She stayed on the Alpha 12 Hover Jet overnight while her father, Roger and SkyeShay went back to the hotel. They would be back later the next day for the results from Rex Peatfield and Agent Schteckler concerning the probability of a successful shoulder surgery. They had taken blood and DNA samples to determine what her bones could and would accept in the ways of a bone graft.
She was clear-eyed and nervous with a slight twinge of pain still lingering in her arm. Knowing everyone else was asleep, she reached over to the table by the side of the bed and grabbed the laptop Agent Evens had left there earlier. She went through her daily routine of checking her school emails and her Amazon subscriptions and deliveries. Once she was finished with the everyday activities, she looked at the logo on the laptop. The Canadian Government was in charge of this whole operation. She thought about attempting to open a folder on the laptop but decided to play it safe. She didn’t want any trouble. Everything was bound to be encrypted anyway, so she put it out of her mind and continued to surf the web. Still, she looked at her surroundings and couldn’t help but wonder what was going on. She decided to do a search of the facts she had in her possession. Opening a private browser, she put the name ‘Rex Peatfield’ into the search bar. This was too vague, so she added the words ‘Canada’, ‘Medicine’, ‘Experiment’, and ‘Government’ to the search. The links appeared to be various “.CA” articles that were of military significance. She was worried about clicking on any of them, so she clicked “Image Search” for the same parameters. This was what she wanted! There were pictures of Dr. Peatfield in all manners of life. His current photo was taken quite recently, it seemed. A whole slew of military photos with teams of men in suits and uniforms. A few photos of a hospital where he was a consultant. It was all very interesting, and Kate was completely invested in his history. He was everything he looked to be on the outside, but what about on the inside? There were no photos of any of that, and when Kate clicked on some of the photos to read the captions there was no mention of any bigfoot type stuff at all. She decided to dig as deep into his past as possible so she found the oldest photo of him she could. It was of a laboratory and the staff he was a part of way back in the day. She clicked on the photo and read the caption. She compared the names to the people in the photo. There was Rex. His hair was a little more stylish and he was younger but that was him all right. Kate saw he was standing very close to someone on his left and the two of them seemed to be sharing a laugh. “Professor Thomas Schteckler” the caption read. Agent Schteckler! He was wearing a white lab coat, and had hair on the top of his head, but yep! That was him! Wild! Sitting in front of Rex was another person in a lab coat. Rex had his hand on her shoulder. Kate immediately went to the caption below. Her eyes focused. She zoomed in on the photo. She backed the photo out and looked again. She zoomed in once more. Kate’s eyes relaxed and her head went back on the pillow slowly. She looked up at the ceiling.
“No….…..way.”, (she said very loudly inside her head.)
CHAPTER 4
Tom Schteckler looked out the window at the shelter they had built for Ha’na and M’Halo. He was surprised they were still there. He could feel Ha’na’s resistance to every suggestion Rex had brought up to them over the past day.
Rex entered the lab and put his coffee down on the counter.
“Morning. How’s the family?”, he said knowing Tom was keeping an eye on things for him.
“Still here, shockingly.”, Tom said.
“Do you think she knows? About the tracker chip?”, Rex asked.
“May as well stay because they’ll find us anyway?”
Tom smirked as he said it, but he looked out at them and his heart sank a bit. What if they did know? He didn’t want them to feel like they were captives. It was for the best. They were much safer with Rex and Tom around, and they must know that or else they would have fled by now.
The results from the overnight calculations on Rex’ computer popped up as complete the second he opened the desktop. They popped up on Tom’s screen as well. After a few minutes of quiet study, Tom looked out the window. He looked back to Rex and waited for his assessment of the results.
“Crap.”, he said. He started typing some notes into the file.
“You’re gonna have to tell her, you know.”, Tom said.
“I’ll wait until her family comes back.”, Rex said robotically.
“I wasn’t talking about her and you know it.”, Tom said still looking out the window.
“I know.”, Rex said. He sat back in his chair and grabbed his coffee. He looked at his friend Tom and his eyes began to well up with tears.
“Listen, I’ll be right there with you.”, Tom said. “We’ve been through the wringer with this thing for decades. I’m not about to let you go it alone.”
Tom was Rex Peatfield’s best friend and partner since they’d met. Where Tom went, Rex followed. Where Rex excelled, he asked Tom for help and advice. Rex already knew Tom had his back, but there were some things you feel should be your burden, and yours alone.
Rex cleared his mind of things out of his control and looked to his itinerary for the morning. Next up was a conference call with the General. They have up to the minute intel and are expecting an immediate return to base with the package intact.
“General Byrne in 7 minutes 6 seconds and counting.”, Rex deflected.
“General Byrne, sir. It’s a pleasure to see your smiling face, sir.”, Tom said as if he was on a late-night talk show. “We hear you’ve got big plans. Huuuge!”
That made Rex laugh out loud. The conversation was going to be nowhere near as pleasant. The pair readied themselves for war.
Rex pulled up the MRI he’d done of M’Halo’s ‘shoulder’, which was in fact a full body scan of his son in 360 degrees. It was fascinating for the two scientists to watch as they zoomed in on certain musculature and growth patterns within his frame. The weight of the subject was determined to be 426 lbs. Height was 7 ft 8 ¾ in. Wingspan 8ft 8in. His VO2 Max, (the amount of oxygen consumption in the bloodstream during physical exertion measured in milliliters per minute), was a ridiculous 74 ml/min. That was above any levels of any human ever recorded. M’Halo was a machine in an organic body and the Government wanted the formula. Rex had also gone ahead and inserted the same translator chip into M’halo that he had placed in Ha’na’s hippocampus a few weeks back. The chip could also be used to track the subject’s location wherever on the planet they may travel. Maybe even off planet…Rex wasn’t sure.
Tom and Rex sat and dreamt of what to do next. The General was going to be on the line in a few minutes and they needed to stall for time.
“Let’s go with the shoulder surgery angle.”, Tom said.
“I wanted to try and keep them out of it.”, Rex said as he’d put his hand on his forehead. He knew Tom was right. It was all they had to use as an excuse for not leaving immediately. They just needed to ramp up the severity of the girl’s injury and tell them she can’t be moved for a few days.
“Doctor Peatfield, sir. The General is on line.”, Agent Ameca announced over the intercom so all could hear. Kate heard it in the medical bay, and it came over the outside intercom as well. Agent Evens was out there at the moment checking M’Halo’s blood pressure and giving them both some lunch. She stopped and listened to the news and stared at Ha’na to see if there was a reaction. Ha’na didn’t seem to hear anything that made her interested at all and continued to watch the skies and the breeze in the trees. This was her home. She loved it and wanted things to go back the way they once were. Now that she knew her husband was not truly one of her species there were doubts about just how far back she wanted to travel in her mind, but, there were times of exuberant joy had in those woods. In this very field. She saw no reason to throw it all away. It was her life, and her son was right here with her again. Why fight it? It may never be this good again.
“So what you’re saying to me if I understand this correctly, Dr. Peatfield, is that you have succeeded in creating a sentient humanoid mammal from a strain of DNA in a slide of a cutting of ancient amber found in the North American region of the globe.”, Tom said. He was sitting right next to Rex, but they had separate feeds going so to make it seem like they were busy on two different parts of the jet. His explanation was his way of trying to move the call along. While the General was widely known to be an expert strategist and poilitician, they both knew his knowledge of science was at best remedial.
“That’s correct, Dr. Schteckler. The experiment, although extremely lengthy and overdue for results, is in the conclusion state as we speak. We should be done here in a couple of days and a return to base will find us with a splendor of data and the envy of the scientific world.” Rex was trying his best to pump the General up and make him think this was all his idea. Byrne was no fool, though.
“Where is the subject right now?”, the General asked.
“We have a tracker chip on the subject. While he is not in custody, per se, he is within reach at any time. We have decided to play it cool and take care of the problem with the injured local that happened during our initial contact with the subject.”, Rex stated as professionally as he could. He trailed off in a guilty tone at the end to signify the blame should be placed on the operation and not the locals in question.
“Yes, the injured party you spoke about in the email.”, Byrne said shuffling papers. He read the email again, and looked rather bored by the prospect of going into details about such unimportant business. “Now, I’d like some clarification on a matter you don’t seem to broach in the report. I understand that you, Dr. Peatfield, for what seems like over seven full years, was the “Subject A” in our little experiment. We now have ‘Subject C’ in our grasp, which is wonderful. Can’t wait to get a look at our boy. There is the matter of ‘Subject B’, though. Has there been any attempt to find, um, “her”… since she escaped into the wild? It would seem that she’s the key to taking this whole experiment to another level, wouldn’t you say?”
This was it. Tom knew he had to take over the conversation.
“General Byrne, sir, the area here is quite vast and “Subject B” being a native to the woods here has obviously taken her newfound freedom to heart after the two weeks we had her at Big Sky Laboratory. There has been no trace of her since. We thought the objective was to get the Government Property, known as ‘Subject C’ back to home base for observation and testing. We thought ‘Subject B’ was somewhat expendable in that matter and basically used her to flush out the subject for capture.”, Tom said. His hands were clenched together so hard his knuckles were turning white.
“Expendable.”, the General said. “Expendable.” There was an awkward silence as he looked at a screen off to his left and was given a sheet of paper from his aide over the top of his screen. “Thank you, gentlemen. I would like to commend you from the rank of General in our Country’s Defense Department for all of the work you’ve put in to this project. Especially you, Dr. Peatfield, as I have followed exactly what you went through both mentally and physically for this to be a success. I do wish the ability to transform was still a possibility as you could be of great service to your country should it had stayed within your power, but nonetheless, the fact that ‘Subject C’ is mere hours away from becoming a… reality here at home base, well…like I said…I’d like to commend you. Please, let’s just finish this up and those commendations will also become a reality.”
“Thank you, General Byrne, sir.”, said Rex and Tom, but not at the same time and totally talking over each other in an attempt to get off the line with their lives and careers intact.
“Byrne out.”, the General said.
Tom looked over at Rex with a look of complete awe and respect.
“You didn’t.”, he said.
“I sure did.”, Rex replied with a wink and a smile.
“What an ace in the hole that is!!”
Tom reached over and gave his buddy an enthusiastic (but low-quality) high five. It mattered not, because the fact that the guys at home base thought Rex had lost the ability to ‘change’ meant they truly didn’t know everything about ‘Subject B’ and that there may be a whole lot more they didn’t know. Once that fact burst into Schteckler’s head, though, he knew what was next.
“We have to tell her. Now.”, Rex said, beating him to the punch.
“Let’s go.” Tom said.
CHAPTER 5
Ha’na had finished eating the best food they’d been offered yet. Bluefish and a wonderful grain. A type she had never tried before. She was grateful for the meal and thanked Ameca and Evens for their hospitality. It was now time for her to get M’Halo from the other side of the field. He was alone and practicing his backflip twists off the side of a tree trunk. He wanted to be ready for the next time he went to the skatepark.
Tom had his tablet with him, but it was not turned on yet and was in sleep mode. His watch would tell him everything he really needed to know and would alert him silently through a series of pulses. If Ha’na‘s heart rate rose to levels of agitation he wanted a heads up for Evens and Ameca who were on call. Tom and Rex had been practicing the oncoming talk for a couple of years now, but he knew they were never going to follow the script all the way through. The situation was too emotionally charged. What they had to say was going to affect the family dynamic so dramatically that any rational reasons that could be argued were rendered somewhat pointless compared to the personal freedoms of a mother and son. Rex tried to keep himself out of that equation out of respect for Ha’na. In his absence, she had done better than admirably raising that young hellion. Rex wasn’t surprised though, what with their previous history. He tried to stay professional about it, but there was no mistaking his personal investment in not only the government project, but the ultimately the restoration of a species of life.
What was once an experiment by an ambitious professor to regenerate human bone tissue had now turned into an ecological and biological breakthrough that could send waves through the scientific communities.
Rex and Tom approached Hannah and were on script at the very start. Tom was always going to take the lead.
“Hannah, we’ve got a conversation we need to have with you before we leave. We were wondering if we could. do it now?”, Tom said.
“Please.“, Rex added. He looked Hannah straight in the eyes to let her know this was the end of the line. The truth was coming out here and there was no going back.
“That will be fine. Let us talk”, Ha’na said. She sat down under the tent to shade the humans from the sun. It was beaming down upon the field with no tree cover, and she knew the one with no fur on his head would be damaged.
“ Hannah, the day we met I was afraid of you. You had everything in order, you had the respect of your elders. Most of all, you had my heart instantly. “, Rex was pulling no punches. He was laying it all on the line in hopes it would break something free within her. Tom stood off to the side, ready for anything, but hoping for the best.
Ha’na bristled at the opening comments from Rex. “The day we met I was practically a child. The human in front of me should have known better. I watch you with these other humans and they respect you for what you do, but do they even know what you’ve done? Do they know who you really are? I fear I never did. “, Hannah said. The gauntlet had been thrown, and Ha’na answered the bell.
“Hannah, what we created together… The life we created…. it was always the plan… Yes, it turned out differently than we had initially hoped, but the result is what matters, “ Rex said, pointing towards Mahalo, some 50 yards away in the field. “Our boy is a miracle”
“He is my miracle, and you will not take him.“, Ha’na said with the utmost confidence. “He is happy right now because I have returned, he is confused right now because you have returned. Or have you?”
“ Hannah, he is our son. I fought my way to get here and the two of you are safer with us than you are out here in the wild. The world is closing in on you and there’s barely anywhere to hide. Hannah…..the Hannah I knew…. would understand that and be logical about a decision that affects her family.”, Rex leaned in, pleading.
“Do not talk like I have changed. The time alone may have hardened me, but I am still the same mother I was when you left us.” Ha’na, ever proud, stood and walked to the back of the tent. She looked out at the woods and did not turn back.
“Hannah, why do you think you have no memory of your parents, or any siblings, or any life before a certain point? I’m trying to make you realize something. You need to realize it yourself. I don’t want any more pain for either of us, but don’t you see? Can’t you see?” , and with that Rex pointed towards Tom and then with both hands on his own chest said, “Is there nothing left?“
Hannah stiffened at the tone Rex was now using. She was feeling insulted. As if they were making a fool of her. Tom checked his watch as he felt the pulse grow. He had his agents just outside the jet.
“ All I have left is right there.“, Hannah pointed towards M’halo. “We are all we have left. Should they take this land from us? We will search for others like us. We will survive without you. We have for a long time, no matter what you think of me.“
“Hannah, please you don’t understand…”, Rex said.
“I understand you people think my son is government property! He is not! He is my son and he is free! I don’t know who you think you are coming here to try……“
“He’s your husband…“
The small voice had crept upon them without them noticing. Kate stood a few yards away with the laptop in her hands.
“Hannah, he’s your husband. Isn’t that right Dr. Peatfield? Agent Schteckler? This is her isn’t it?“, Kate said. She turned the laptop towards them both and pointed at the picture on the screen and then the caption below the photo. Her finger rested on the words “Dr. Hannah Peatfield“
Rex and Tom were flabbergasted. Ha’na looked at the three humans with a blank stare. She saw what they were looking at, but it created no new revelations for her. Tom looked at his watch and saw no spikes in her heart rate. Tom turned to Rex with the look of defeat.
Rex looked at Hannah. Really looked at her. He looked in her eyes. He walked up to her and got very close. He put his hand on her shoulder. She became tense. It was now or never, and he knew it.
“Hannah. You can understand us because I implanted a microchip into your hippocampus that translates our languages. That same microchip also has the capability to facilitate the “change“ back to who you once were. I need you to try. Hannah come back.“ Rex, waited for a response. He remained silent. He did not let go.
Hannah looked at him dumbfounded, as if he was from another planet. She looked to his left and saw Tom with a hopeful look on his face. She looked at Kate who had the seeds of tears in her eyes.
Kate looked at Hannah and tried not to blink or the tears would run. She walked towards Rex and handed him the laptop. Hannah stood still until Kate walked up to her.
Without saying a word, Kate spoke to Hannah inside their minds.
“Can you change?“
“What do you mean change?” Hannah said back to her.
“This is not you… You’re one of us. Can you change back into who you once were? Hannah Peatfield.”
“This is wrong. I see no path to the truth in what you say, Kate. Thank you for your help in these matters. I thank you for understanding how this conversation affects my son and I. I …..would not wish him to know this. Would it be true, I would be forced to live in shame among our tribe.” Hannah spoke as if had she known the answer, it had been long since forgotten. She looked at Kate for guidance.
“Here …,” said Rex as he handed Kate the laptop.
Kate grabbed it quickly and turned back around to Hannah. She showed Hannah the screen. Ha’na looked dubiously at the photograph. Kate zoomed in on the three of them and pointed first at Rex, and then to Rex standing right next to her. Then she pointed at Tom in the photograph, and then at Tom right next to her. Then she pointed at Hannah Peatfield, and then pointed at Hannah. “Do you see it?” Can you use this photo as a guide? A map? Do you recall this day in your life? Can you visualize this person? This form? I look at you and I recognize her in your eyes.”
Rex stood off to the side and could feel the frustration building. He was having an out of body experience and it wasn’t going well. He was frozen as he watched the two women communicate. His wife was standing in front of him, a victim of her own bravery.
CHAPTER 6
SEVEN YEARS AGO
Hannah Peatfield helped create the process to regenerate bone tissue with her husband Rex and their best friend Tom all those years ago. Government funding was about to be cut and their work was going on the shelf. Hannah, Rex, and Tom could only wonder what was next for them. They had been working together for so long and now, they could be split up within the ranks of the military. Rex himself had stakes in the game as his own leg would need a transplant of bone marrow or must be amputated sooner than later. There were tears. There were arguments. One night soon after, knowing they were close to success, but without having done any sufficient testing, Hannah decided to take matters into her own hands. The government wanted results, and according to her calculations, they had the process perfected. She was unafraid, and ready to prove to her superiors that their faith in the trio’s work was not in vain. Rex would never have let her take the radiation treatment first without testing it and she knew that, so she took it upon herself. Without any support or assistance Hannah subjected herself to the radiation. The video surveillance showed she could not take the pain. Her bone density grew, but at what cost? Her mind shut down. It was the most horrible thing Rex had ever seen. Knowing she was out there somewhere vulnerable to the elements and possibly mentally compromised by what had occurred, Rex begged Tom to subject him to the exact same treatment immediately. Having Tom at the desk though, things turned out differently. Having someone at the helm watching levels, Tom made adjustments during the treatment. Hannah could not strap herself in sufficiently without help, sliding off the table just enough to miss a good portion of the radiation beam. Tom made sure Rex was secure on the table and gave him the maximum dose for his weight percentile. Just in case, before Tom had started the process, Rex thanked him and said he loved him. Tom said he loved him back. That second experiment was a success, and their lives were changed forever. Tom, the best friend, was horrified. Tom, the science nerd, was elated. There was no time to celebrate, though, as Rex immediately had to go find Hannah.
Rex immediately felt his mind slipping away into this new persona. There were tiny glimmers of what was to come, but Rex’s mind was strong, and he pushed back. Using every bit of his human intellect, he found Hannah after following her trail with his newfound senses. He could track her with his nose, and surprisingly there was an extra-sensory perception of someone ahead of him; around him. Someone scared. Someone in pain. He followed those senses until he caught up with her. She was a wild animal, and he knew he must be her protector. They were husband and wife; for richer or poorer, in sickness or health. Rex gave in to the wild-style of their new life together.
CHAPTER 7
Back in the present day, Tom stood and watched Kate and Hannah talking silently with their minds. He watched the readings on his tablet; the brainwave levels were off the charts. He wondered if Rex could feel it. Did he have to be in his animal state to sense such things? He looked at his best friend and saw the turmoil on his face and decided to make one last play for the win.
“Rex, we’re wasting valuable time. It’s now or never, man.”, Tom said. He was being robotic about it but felt that’s what the situation needed. The emotions were bound to be running high in a few minutes and before he played his final card, Rex would need to know someone had their mind in the right place.
Rex took off his jacket and glasses. He grabbed Hannah by the hand and started the transformation into Mauo. Kate had seen this already on SkyeShay’s phone but at point blank range it was horrifying. The fur came in first and at such speed that by the time you’d blinked it would be at full length. The musculature was the most fascinating part in her opinion. Noises went off like firecrackers. It sounded like wood splitting and a flag flapping in a high wind. It was over quickly, and Kate stepped forward to look at his face. The brow protruded, and the jaw was more pronounced. She scanned his eyes, and they were watery from the pain of the swelling and stretching. He almost seemed to be steaming slightly? She could feel the heat from him now whereas seconds ago there was nothing of the sort. Rex was gone. In his place stood Ha’na’s husband, Mauo. Kate stayed silent. She was freaked out and let the adults talk.
“Ok, Hannah,”, Rex said within the mind meld. No one could hear him but her. “It’s just you and me now. What do I have to do to convince you I’m telling the truth.”
Ha’na turned to the left where M’Halo was standing. He had stopped playing around the instant Mauo came out. He was as silent as Kate, and doubly shocked. This must be heavy business. He took some steps to his left trying to appear indifferent but the events unfolding in front of him had him shaken.
“I wish you had not done that….I saw the pain it brought you. Are you ok? I am sorry you felt you needed…”, Ha’na said back to him.
“I am fine. It is a strain on my mental facilities, my mind, more than anything. If I go long periods without doing it, well, it tends to hurt more.”, Rex said back. He was glad she felt she could act more civil when they talked ‘alone’.
“You needn’t go through it just for me. I am starting to understand what is happening.”, Ha’na asked as she looked around her at Tom and Kate.
“Hannah, all I want you to understand is that you’re in there…. SOMEWHERE. We have done the testing on your DNA to prove it…..even though I knew it all along. As a scientist I have to be sure and document all results, though, and we’ve confirmed it.”, Rex said. He was talking to Hannah, his human wife, even though he was unsure he was getting in that deep to her psyche. He had to try and draw her out. It was his last chance.
“What do you need from me? I feel like I am coming undone….like I am not whole while you people speak to me. There was nothing wrong with my life until all this happened, and I’d like to return to the peaceful life our son and I knew.” Ha’na was getting emotional. On the outside, she emitted tears from her eyes as she spoke inside to Mauo/Rex.
Tom was watching for a reading on his tablet, but then decided to fold it up and walk away. He couldn’t take the storm of feelings that were brewing. He had to steel himself and be ready for any situation. He’d promised Rex as much and he owed it to his old friend, Hannah.
Mauo turned his head a notch to watch Tom walk away but came right back to Ha’na. “Let us both be silent for a period of time, close our eyes together, and try and go back. Together. Can you do that for me, please? No injections, no tests, no devices. Just you. Just me.” Mauo held out his hand again. Ha’na took it. She was already in an emotional state. Having Rex so near made her feel even more vulnerable. It caused an avalanche of feelings to erupt from her including an imperceptible moan of fear.
Kate was walking after Tom. She was on the outside looking in as far as the plan they had concocted to resurrect Hannah from her alter ego and felt left out. She was concerned and couldn’t tell what was happening or if anything was happening at all. “Dr. Schteckler….what…what’s…is it ok? Do you think they’re ok?”
Tom had never really had dealings with teenagers and felt it would be best to just not speak. He had no answers, really, and was too choked up to talk anyway. The two just stood back and had no choice but to observe.
Mauo put his arms around Ha’na. Inside their minds, Rex put his arms around her as well. He tried to visualize the day she came to the lab. The day they met. The day they kissed for the first time. The day they moved in together. The time they broke up for a few months. The time they reunited. The day they got engaged. The day they got married. The day they bought their home. The day they got the grant for the research. It all flooded through his head, and he tried to breach an invisible barrier within her mind. She sat though it all with little reaction and her tears even stopped. The scenes were all new to her and she didn’t know the woman in the dreams she was seeing. She seemed happy. Rex seemed happy. She tried to find her own happy dreams and put forth an effort she wasn’t aware she had left emotionally. The vision that came up first, however, was of Mauo and her meeting in the woods. They stared at each other, and he approached her slowly. Ha’na was afraid and stepped backwards in an attempt to run away. He reached out for her, and she swatted at his hand and fled to a safer place. She was afraid, but also felt as if this was something she had been waiting to happen. She tried to go back farther, but it wasn’t there for her. She went limp in his arms and wept.
“I cannot.”, she said quietly.
“I know, my love….”, Mauo said.
He held her tightly. Securely. There was no plan past this point. There was nothing left to do but let her know she was not alone. That she was loved. A hand slid around Mauo’s shoulder. The light on their faces went darker as the shadow of their son reached around them both. He enveloped his parents and let them both feel loved. Made them both feel secure. It was the first time the three of them had been this close in years and the result was as humans say: raw.
Tom tapped Kate on the arm and they walked back to the Alpha 12 as if they’d just left a funeral.
CHAPTER 8
Tom sat in his swivel chair. Kate sat in Rex’ chair to his left. They were silent. Kate watched out the window of the Alpha12 as Rex, Ha’na and M’Halo walked into the woods together. She worried she would never see them again and wanted to speak to Tom about her fears. The mood in the room stopped her from trying. She decided that she would just sit there and let Tom speak when he was ready.
Tom was at the keyboard filling in all data and reporting on what had happened today and any ideas on what the new plan of action could be. He then logged on to the Government Website and relayed the files to home base. Once that was done, he opened a file with image thumbnails and initiated the slide show.
“Okay… thank you for your patience.”, he said to Kate while still facing the screen. “How does your shoulder feel? It should still have residual pain from the initial trauma. Do you need any medications?”
“I’ve had ibuprofen. It hurts, sure, but it’s no bigs.”, Kate said. She was very nervous. She could sense a fork in the road and didn’t like not being in on the rest of the story.
“Ok good. So…..while I’m sure you have a plethora of questions for me, I really have only one answer for you and its about your shoulder. I was hoping your father would be here when I told you. Do you think we can reach him?” Tom had now faced Kate and was so attentive to her she almost felt attacked.
“I could try and get him on the phone. Hang on….”, Kate said grabbing her phone and making the call.
“Hi Honey! How are you feeling? I’m at the site with the Sheriff and the Lieutenant Governor or I’d have been there by now. Sorry…”, Todd Starling said.
“I’m doing ok, I guess. Dr. Schteckler wants to talk to you about my shoulder.”, she said.
“That’s fine…that’s fine. Am I on speaker?”, he asked.
Kate pushed the speaker button. “You are now..”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Starling. I’ve got the results back and it’s time for a discussion on Kate’s situation and how we might be of help. Do you have some free time at the moment?”, Tom said very business-like.
“I’ll make time.”, Todd said very matter-of-factly. “Roger! Take over for me will you please?”
Roger had been very busy since the incident at the Lake Development. He’d found out his girlfriend was not who she claimed to be, but someone even better. He’d found out said girlfriend was a marketing genius who had just jumped into the millionaire’s club and was the talk of the Social Media Influencer ring. He’d found out his sister was not on board with the family business. He’d also found out that his father had obviously softened in the recent future. Starling Development would be stopping the Lakeside Project and creating a Land Refuge in tandem with SHARE-LING INC. and the state’s conservation society. The signs had been put up this morning and the chain link fence was on its way from Pennsylvania slated to arrive tonight. The community had become a haven for newscasters and thrill seekers. The idea was to protect the woods by keeping them secluded and safe from the advancement of industry and eventual waste and blight.
SkyeShay left no doubt who was in charge of the marketing at the Game Refuge. Her sales of the THRILLDABEAST plushies worldwide afforded her the ability to do even more research into the plight of the Native Americans of the North American continent. She contacted representatives of every organization imaginable. She even found a Motorcycle Club that had an indigenous faction in Iowa of all places. She sent a sample of the Shawly to them as a gift, leading one of the Club’s seamstresses to add the garment to her leather jacket as an accessory. This was seen by all at the annual Motorcycle convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. A quick phone call was all it took, and a fashion trend was born.
Kate was still on the Alpha12. She had gone through a myriad of testing and been warned about the dangers of what they were going to attempt. Her shoulder was all but irreparable. Too much fraying from the speed and violence of the separation of the bones and socket. The option was put forth to Todd, Claire, and Kate for an experimental procedure that Tom and Rex had been working on for years. They had found success with bone regeneration through a DNA splicing and radiation process. There were side effects, but they felt Kate would be a prime candidate. They already knew she would be open minded about things, which helped.
Kate was in the cockpit waiting to hear from Rex upon his return. He had been gone hours with Ha’na and M’Halo. There were no beeps and buzzes on the Jet today. The whole thing had been put in ‘dark mode’ Tom said, so they could do maintenance and be ready for the flight back to Canada. Agents Evens and Ameca dutifully went about their procedures and completed every checklist while Tom sat and waited for his friend. He never said a word about how long he would wait. He just waited. And waited.
Rex emerged from the woods some hours later. He was alone. He was naked except for a strap of vines around his nether regions. Kate saw him first. She blurted out a quick “THERE!”, and then got really embarrassed about his state of dress. Tom looked over and saw him walking towards the jet. He got out of the cockpit and met Rex outside. The two hugged briefly and talked quietly about a few things. Rex handed Tom something and walked up the steps into the jet. He walked straight back to the med lab and shut the door quietly.
Tom came back into the cockpit and put something on the desk next to him. It was a couple of red rubber things that looked like a car fuse with metal connectors at the ends. He went to the dashboard and hit a few buttons. The Alpha12 came to life. Systems all over the jet began self-checks and programs. It was complete chaos if you weren’t used to it but Tom, Evens and Ameca just watched it happen like they had turned on their television.
“Is he ok?”, Kate asked Tom. She knew he was occupied with the jet, but she couldn’t hold back anymore. “Are they OK?”
Tom seemed to ignore her, but, after a long beat he grabbed his headphones and looked her way.
“Better than he has been in a while, actually. Strap in, Kate.”, he said as he kept pushing buttons and adjusting levers.
“Cary, final systems check is a go. How are we for liftoff?”, Tom said as he called over the intercom.
A voice came back instantly.
“Ready, sir.”
A touch of a mouse pad under Tom’s right hand initiated the engine start process. It was quiet. Whisper quiet. Kate thought she could hear something, but it wasn’t exactly sound. It was like the air around the jet wasn’t there anymore. They were in a kind of vacuum. Tom pressed another button and the engines outside on the wings began to rotate into vertical positions.
“Here we go.”, he looked at Kate. “It’s so cool. You’re going to enjoy it.”
The engines started drawing air into the hypercirculation chamber and the jet became lighter than oxygen. The trees began to sink as the sky became their new landscape. The Alpha12 rose slowly into the lower atmosphere. Kate could see the whole county out her window. She saw all three bays of the lake, the dock where her Dad’s boat was parked year-round, and the development site which had ceased operations. Trucks were bringing the actual dirt back that was taken just last week. This was important as they didn’t want any unknown bacteria or parasites to invade the ecosystem. Kate felt so proud of her father and brother. OH! And SkyeShay, too! She had been in text conversations nonstop with her since she woke up the morning after the shoulder injury. What an incredible turn of events it had been for her! She had been hustling the whole time since Kate had met her last winter, even though it didn’t look like she was doing much of anything other than taking videos of doing her makeup and getting ready to go out with Roger. There was a lot more going on inside SkyeShay than anyone had guessed, Kate thought. Very cool.
The Alpha12 was in hover-mode about a thousand feet over the field. Lost in the clouds, literally, Kate heard a noise from behind. It was Rex. She figured he’d cleaned up and want his seat back, so she got up without looking. She was very wrong. He hadn’t even put clothes on and was still wearing the vines! She sat back down and turned the chair around to face the control panel with a blushed face.
“Just saved the files and sent them off. You’ll get some flak for sure but they’re not gonna can you.”, he said as he handed something to Tom. Tom placed the chip next to the other two on the desk.
“Not if they want the tech.”, Tom said while opening a folder on the laptop. “Ok. I see what we’re doing. Have you got a read on the new spot?”
“About five miles East and down a ravine. Almost looks like a prehistoric cave dwelling. Be good to keep a low profile for a while even if the boy can’t keep his head down. Just gotta keep his mouth shut until the fences are up. Wish me luck. Lots of luck.”, Rex smiled in a sarcastic manner.
“So….is she good? You think she’s okay with this?”, Tom asked as a friend, and not a co-worker.
“We did a lot of talking in there, but the truth I saw in her head changed everything. Not only is the past completely erased but her future is still shining with the power of the sun. She’s looking ahead. The same outlook as when we first met as students, and just as resilient. We’re going to need a bit of time, but we’re going to make it. Promise.” Rex touched a few buttons on the dash and looked at Kate.
“I’m looking forward to seeing you again, young lady.”, he said to Kate.
“You are?”, she said quietly. She was so in over her head with what they had been talking about that she’d zoned out.
“Oh, yes. I’d like you to thank your family for the generosity they’ve shown in the past couple of days. Oh, and please send my gratitude to Ms. Desolu. None of this would have happened without her initial taping of my son boogie boarding that day.”
“Really?, she said with a bit of shock.
“That put the wheels in motion back at home base. I’d been trying to get a read on the situation since I’d regained full human consciousness a few years back but couldn’t imagine they’d still be in the area. Your future sister-in-law is basically a legendary wildlife documentarian from this point forward. Charles Darwin, Jane Goodall, and now SkyeShay Desolu.” He looked at Tom for a reaction. He got the eyeroll he wanted out of his old-school buddy and then reached out his right hand. “Come visit.”
“I will. I’ve got some vacation time coming up.”, Tom got up out of his chair and grabbed Rex for a long hug.
“Make us proud, man.”, Rex said into Tom’s shoulder.
“We’re going to do it, Rex. It’s going to make history. You did it. So did she. She needs to know how important she was to all of this.”, Tom said as he held his friend by the shoulders and looked in his eyes for the last time in a while.
“Every day, man. I’ll let her know every day. She doesn’t know how important she really is….to me, or the world.”
Rex walked out of the cockpit and to the right side of the cabin. Agent Ameca was standing by the hatch door.
“Where to?”, yelled Tom as he took the jet out of hover mode and it started to slice forward into the sky.
“Third Bay! Noone hangs out in Third Bay, and I believe it’s the deepest.”, Rex smiled and hugged Agent Ameca. “Thanks for everything Cary.” Tom set the Alpha12 on an auto-piloted course.
Agent Evens came forward with a leather satchel that had a bungee cord strap and put it around Rex’ neck and shoulder.
“Give this to your boy. It’s his favorite.”, she said with a misty eyed smile. “Thank you, sir.” She kissed him on the cheek. Rex was touched and gave her a hug.
Turning towards the hatch he waited for Ameca to break the seal. The door shifted in and to the side smoothly. The wind rushed by silently. All you could hear were the engines rotating. Rex put his hands on the sides of the hatchway. He turned his head back to the right and looked at Tom.
“I love you.”, he said with a wink.
“Love you, too Rex.”, Tom said. He knew what was coming so he turned around and got in his cockpit chair.
Rex dove out of the jet head first. Kate freaked out and screamed. She ran towards the side to look out a window.
SNAP!
POP!
FLAP! FLAP! FLAP!
Mauo soared through the air on the way to the splashdown.
A few miles away, M’Halo heard the whines of the jet’s engines ramp up to speed and looked to the sky. He caught the figure leap out of the Alpha12 and freefall into a perfect swan dive that created a spectacular crystal crown of water that splashed a hundred feet high.
“WOOOO HOOOO!”, M’Halo yelled with joy. “Did you SEE that, Ma!?”
“He wonders where you get it from….really.”, Ha’na rolled her eyes.
“I’m so doing that when they come back and you know it!”, he said as they kept moving forward.
THE END
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