It sat quiet and unmoving on the narrow access road. The rear door was open wide. The weak cab dome light was turned on.
Billy wasn't sure what to do.
There was no sign of his HETA confederates nor of the animal they were supposed to be moving. He was supposed to go meet Remo at the car, but there didn't appear to be anything to show him. And the last thing Billy wanted to do was to inspire Remo's anger yet again. Frowning, he decided to investigate a little before going off for his rendezvous.
Billy struggled to his feet.
He wiped the strange slick fluid from his hands as he stepped carefully over to the truck. Whatever it was, it felt sticky on his pant legs. Not like mud.
At the rear of the truck, he found the leash that had been used to tie the BBQ to the vehicle. It was snapped in half. Standing on tiptoes and leaning inside the rear of the truck, Billy saw none of the animals.
Frowning in confusion, he walked around to the cab.
He noted the ghastly stench as he approached the front of the truck. Far worse than the odor people claimed he made. This was like rotting roadkill.
Below the open cab window, Billy suddenly remembered the strange fluid on his hands. The dome light was weak, but good enough to see by.
He examined his hands. They were slick and red. Red?
Experimentally, he sniffed the substance. As he did so, he glanced over to the edge of the cornfield. And froze.
It was there. Near the edge of the field. He had fallen right next to it and hadn't seen it.
The body had been ripped to shreds. The face was ghastly white, the dead mouth open wide in shock. Billy recognized the man. Ron DePew.
It was blood on his hands. Ron's blood. Billy staggered back, falling against the cab. Away from the body. Get away!
Billy stumbled around the front of the cab. Another body. Flat on its back. Stomach open wide.
Blood. Blood everywhere.
On the ground, on the body. On the face.
Eyes looking up at him. Feral, angry. The creature had been feasting on the second corpse. It lifted its head out of the stomach cavity, entrails dripping from its slathering, crimson-smeared mouth.
Hideous, blood soaked. And familiar. Panic gripped his thudding chest. Billy twisted, tried to run. Too late.
The creature bounded toward him. A single leap and it was upon him. One curled paw lashed down toward his neck, talons curled in violent rage.
Blood exploded from his throat, spattering across the grille and windshield of the silent truck.
And in his last moments of life, Billy Pierce reacted to fear and brutal death with the same blind instinct used by the first ancestors of humanity to scamper down from the trees.
Billy screamed.
REMO HEARD the terrified shriek from the distant edge of the opposite field.
He had just given up his futile search at the edge of the woods and was turning back in Billy's direction.
The sound shocked him to action.
Rather than follow the paths through the high corn, Remo threw himself into the nearest stalks. While he ran, he slashed his hands left and right.
Corn stalks toppled and crumpled, falling back in his wake. He moved through the first field like a determined thresher, reaching the road's edge in less than fifteen seconds.
He broke into the open near his rental car. There was another vehicle parked up the road. Remo had no time to see who it might be. He bounded across the desolate street and plowed into the opposite field of corn.
His hands were slicing blurs as he hacked a beeline passageway through the tall corn to the point where Billy's scream had originated.
He exploded through the second field and onto the narrow access road.
The stench of blood was powerful, mixed in with the odor of digestive fluids and exposed bowels. Remo saw the gutted body of Ron DePew first. Eyes keenly trained in Sinanju followed the bloody path Billy Pierce had unwittingly left from the edge of the cornfield to the front of the rented truck.
Remo found Billy. What was left of him.
The body had been mutilated. The face and neck were ripped to shreds. The large chest was open. White ribs shone like orderly piano keys through the split casing of frail human flesh.
In spite of the gruesomeness of the attack, Billy had fared better than Clyde Simmons.
The other HETA member had been the main course in a grisly buffet. His stomach cavity had been split open wide. The spine was visible on the opposite side of the large hollow. There were no organs left.
Blood washed the area, turning the earth to sticky mud.
Remo tuned his senses to their limit. Obviously, an animal was responsible. And the HETA people were supposed to be exchanging the BBQs tonight.
The cicadas and crickets continued their nightly serenade. In the distance, a car engine coughed to life. But in all the night sounds, Remo could not locate those of even a single large predator.
Settling for the next-best thing, Remo went to the edge of the area soaked with blood. As expected, he found a set of tracks leading away from the bodies.
They were odd. A ball-shaped indentation preceded by a strange clawing hook. The imprint was nothing he was familiar with. A BBQ.
The path led back into the cornfield.
Loping, Remo followed the trail through the acres of soughing corn. The path ran parallel to the one he had made, though it was much clumsier than his own. He followed it out to the road.
By the time he reached the blacktop street, the dirt of the field had cleared the blood from the animal's foot pads. Once Remo reached the road, he was unable to determine where the creature had gone.
He looked up to where the road disappeared in the darkness. Nothing. Back in the other direction, he saw a lone car turning onto the main route toward the prison.
He'd lost it. The BBQ was gone.
RETURNING TO THE BODIES of the HETA men, Remo crouched down to examine the carnage.
It was a grim sight.
Now that he knew what kind of footprints the BBQs made, he could see the animal's imprints all around the body of Clyde Simmons. They were everywhere-one atop the other.
Remo traced them back to the original set. The last ones made before the initial attack. These ones ran up along side the truck.
At the rear, he found the snapped leash. The animal must have been left there. It had broken free before going on its violent rampage.
Remo's eyes narrowed as he examined the ground.
"What the dingdong?" he said, brow furrowed. Hands on his knees, he examined the ground carefully.
The imprints back here weren't the same ones as at the front of the truck. These were heavy, clumsy hoofprints. Not the cautious, delicate ones that had been made around the HETA bodies.
Remo bit the inside of his cheek in concentration. Try as he might, he couldn't come up with a suitable explanation.
He went around to the truck's cab. Leaning in, he pulled on the headlights.
The wooded area in front of the truck was immediately bathed in a wide yellow glow.
He went back to the bodies.
The tracks were still the same as before. And still different from the ones in the back.
Staring at the problem wouldn't bring a solution. There was nothing more he could do here. Let Smith try to sort out the mystery.
As he was turning to go, he noticed something odd about the body of Billy Pierce.
"What the hell?" Remo said, puzzled.
He squatted down next to the body. With careful fingers, he reached to the edge of the raking wound in Billy's chest.
An object clung to the flesh. It was hard and thin and shaped like a waxing moon.
Remo plucked the object free. He examined it in the glow of the headlights.
Going back to the cab, Remo found a few white envelopes with the HETA address embossed in the upper left-hand corners lying on the dashboard.