Once outside the bathroom door, Ames moved quickly. His experience with the coyotes told him that the window of opportunity with those furry bastards was small; even if he managed to keep them from taking off with a lamb, they'd still take a bite out of the necks of some of his sheep, just for spite, as he ran them off. The key to getting the coyotes was to get them early, while they were still on the periphery of the herd, having a community meeting about which of the sheep they were planning to take on.
Ames pressed his thumb to the lock of his gun cabinet to get his shotgun and his shells. While he was loading the shotgun, he looked over the perimeter monitor to see where the coyotes were lurking. The monitor had three of them out near the edge of the creek. It looked like they had stopped for a drink before they Went for the main course.
Ames could also see from the monitor that the coyotes were larger than usual; hell, they might even be wolves. The Department of the Interior people were doing one of their occasional attempts at reintroducing wolves to the area. They always seemed shocked when the wolves "disappeared" within a few months. The sheep ranchers were smart enough not to leave the carcasses lying around. Wolves were a temporary problem, easily fixed. Coyotes, on the other hand, were like rats bred with dogs. You could shoot 'em, trap 'em, or poison 'em and they'd still keep coming back.
Which is why Ames splurged for the coyote alarm system. It was a simple enough setup: Several dozen motion detectors planted on the perimeter of his land that tracked anything that moved. His sheep had implanted sensor chips that told the system to ignore them; anything else was tracked. If it was large enough, Ames got an alert. Just how large something had to be before the alarm went off was something Vern had to calibrate; after a few early-morning false alarms Amy made it clear that any more false alarms would result in Verris head meeting a heavy iron skillet. But now it was in the zone and aside from the occasional deer, reliably alerted Ames to the coyotes and other occasional large predators. It spotted a mountain lion once; Ames missed that shot.
Ames rooted through the junk drawer to find the portable locator and then slipped out the back door. It was a five-minute hike to the stream. It did no good to drive over to the coyotes, since they'd hear the engine of his ATV and be long gone before he got there, and then he'd just have to come out and try to shoot them some other time. The coyotes could hear him coming on foot, too, but at least this way he had a chance of getting close enough to take a shot before they dispersed. Ames padded to the stream as quietly as he could, cursing silently with each snapped twig and crackling seed pod.
Near the creek, Ames's portable locator started to vibrate in his jacket pocket, a signal that one of the coyotes was very close by. Ames froze and hunkered down, so as not to spook the intended recipient of his shotgun blast, and slowly pulled out the locator to get a bead on the nearest coyote. The locator showed it behind him, heading for him and coming up fast. Ames heard the footfalls and the whisper of something large swiping against the bushes. He turned, swung his shotgun around and had just enough time to think to himself that's no coyote before the thing stepped inside the barrel length of the shotgun, grabbed his head with one paw the size of a dinner plate, and used the second paw of roughly similar size to slug him into oblivion.
Some indeterminate time later Ames felt himself kicked lightly back into consciousness. He propped himself up with one arm, and used his other hand to feel his face. It felt sticky; Ames pulled his hand back to look at it. His blood looked blackish in the quarter moonlight. Then someone stepped in between him and the moon.
"Who are you?" a voice said to him.
"Who am I?" Ames said, and as his tongue moved in his mouth he could feel the teeth loosened by the hit that had knocked him out. "Who the hell are you? This is my property, and those are my sheep. You're trespassing on my land!" He struggled to get up. A hand—a normal-sized hand, this time—pushed him back down to the ground.
"Stay down," the voice said. "How did you know we were out here?"
"You tripped my coyote alarm," Ames said.
"See, Rod," another voice said. "I told you that that's what those things were. Now we gotta worry about cops. And we're not even near done."
"Quiet," the first voice, now named Rod, said, and directed his attention back to Ames. "Mr. Ames, you need to answer my question honestly now, because the answer will make a difference as to whether you make it through the rest of the night. Who gets alerted when your coyote alarm goes off? Is it just you, or does it notify the local law enforcement as well?"
"I thought you didn't know who I was," Ames said.
"Well, now I do," Rod said. "Answer the question."
"Why would it alert the sheriff?" Ames asked. "The sheriff's office doesn't give a damn about coyotes."
"So it's just you we have to worry about," Rod said.
"Yes," Ames said. "Unless you make enough noise to wake up my wife."
"Back to work, Ed," Rod said. "You've got a lot of injections to make yet." Ames heard someone shuffle off. His eyes were finally adjusting to the dim light and he could make out the silhouette of a man looming nearby. Ames sized him up; he might be able to take him. He glanced around, looking for his shotgun.
"What are you doing out here?" Ames asked.
"We're infecting your sheep," Rod said.
"Why?" Ames asked.
"Hell if I know, Mr. Ames," Rod said. "They don't pay me to ask why they have me do things. They just pay me to do them. Takk," he said, or something like it, and from the corner of his eye Ames saw something huge move toward his general direction. This was the thing that had knocked him out. Ames slumped; in the shape he was in he couldn't take two guys at the same time, and he absolutely couldn't take on that, whatever the hell it was.
"Yes, boss," the thing said, in a high, nasal voice.
"Can you handle Mr. Ames here?" Rod asked.
Takk nodded. "Probably."
"Do it," Rod said, and walked off. Ames opened his mouth to yell to Rod, but before he could take in a breath, Takk leaned over and grabbed him hard enough that the air bursting out of his lungs made an audible popping sound. Takk turned slightly into the moonlight, and Ames got one good look before he went somewhere warm, wet, and suffocating.
Brian came aware instantaneously with the knowledge of two things. The first: He was Brian Javna, aged 18, senior at Reston High, son of Paul and Arlene Javna, brother of Ben and Stephanie Tavna, best friend to Harry Creek, whom he had known since first grade, when they bonded over a paste-eating contest The second: He was also an intelligent agent program, designed to efficiently locate and retrieve information across the various data and information nets human beings had strung up over the years. Brian found these two generally contradictory states of being interesting, and used the talents derived from both types of intelligent experience to come up with a question.
"Am I dead?" Brian said.
"Urn," Creek said.
"Don't be coy," Brian said. "Let me make it easy for you. When you wake up with the knowledge that you're a computer program, you figure that somethings gone wrong. So: Am I dead?"
"Yes," Creek said. "Sorry."
"How did I die?" Brian asked.
"In a war," Creek said. "At the Battle of Pajmhi."
"Where the hell is Pajmhi?" Brian asked. "I've never heard of it."