B008IFNJZM EBOK (50 page)

             
Tom looked over their shoulders.

             
“Hoosier National Park…”

             
“How far away is that?”

             
“From here, maybe an hour.”

             
“Now what?”

             
“Tomorrow, I think I will buy us some nonresident passes for Indiana’s Hoosier National forest park.  Feel like going fishing Crosley?”

             
“I am way past due for doing a little fishing.”

             
Tom looked at the women.

             
“It makes sense.  You roll in with an RV or rent a cabin and no one is around.  You can come and go as you please and if you have to kill something chances are if it is something like a deer, it would go unnoticed.”

             
“And when the next full cycle comes around, you travel an hour or so away and make a kill.  When it starts to get too hot, you pack up and move on.”

             
“So if we are not here tomorrow night ladies, fly in that direction and find us.”

             
“How will we find you?”

             
Crosley pulled his bowie knife from his belt and removed a sharpening stone.

             
“One hour after sundown, I will set at the camp sharpening my knife.”

             
He ran the blade over the stone.

             
“Think you can hear that?”

             
Chelsea smiled.

             
“Like a Bunyips howl.”

             
“Then that my ladies will be your beacon to find us.”

             
Tom and Crosley took the girls into the study and showed them how the weapons worked.  They were impressed.  Later, the girls checked the kitchen and found that Elizabeth had restocked their blood supply and siphoned down their nourishment.  Chelsea and Crosley took a walk on the grounds as Iolana and Tom spent their evening in the study talking about Tom’s memories of his father and Iolana’s life before she met Tom.

***

             
It was two in the afternoon before Tom and Crosley pulled Uncle Joe’s trailer into the park.  They found a campsite and decided it would be their base of operations.  They were near the bank of a small tributary that fed into Patoka Lake.  Being a Tuesday, the area they picked was free from other visitors.  Only once did they see several men on camouflaged four wheelers pass by.  Crosley fired up a battery powered chain saw and cut and trimmed a single large limb and laid it next to the water’s edge. 
             
They sat on the bank fishing after that and talked about how they would proceed when the girls arrived.  They did haul in a few fish and decided that would be their dinner.  As the sun went down, the catch of the day was cleaned and they ate.  Once darkness settled in, Crosley began to clean and then sharpen his knife with the stone that was to be the girl’s beacon.  The large tent was set up for the girls with the flap open.  It would be their changing room along with two pints of blood in a cooler.  Several times they heard something nearby in the brush and Tom held a pistol in his lap with his special weapon next to Crosley’s special weapon between the men and they said nothing.  Crosley kept sliding the knife over the stone.

             
Crosley stopped sharpening his blade as he heard the sound of flapping wings.  The girls flew into the tent and Crosley got up.

             
“It’s time for me to get ready.”

             
He entered the smaller tent to change.  Tom held his gun close as he added more wood to the fire.  Only Iolana came out of the tent with a towel over her head.  She kept her head down low and said nothing.  Crosley came out in shorts and a ‘t-shirt with his blade attached to his belt.  He removed Iolana’s towel and she rose up.  Crosley put his jacket on her and she sat back down.

             
“Did you shave and wax?”

             
“The only hair on my body is on my head.”

             
Crosley opened a jar and began to smear a white cream into her scalp and heavily coated all the hair on her head.  She sat there as Tom looked on. 

             
“According to Chelsea, the reason they can smell vampires is their hair.  Every day when a vampire sleeps, the hair on their bodies stop growing and for those daylight hours the hair is for all practical purposes, dead.  Then when the sun goes down and they return to life, their hair kicks in double time to recover.  The pseudogene begins to produce large amounts of a chemical called Keratin.  According to the psychic, that is what the werewolves smell.  So what we have done with this compound is neutralize that scent.”

             
Crosley put his hat on her head.

             
“Now lean forward and don’t look up.  You have to pretend to be me until Chelsea and I return.”

             
“I would feel better if Chelsea took my place and I went with you.”

             
“I wouldn’t.  These are two legged wolves with human intelligence.  You can bet your last dollar that they are constantly watching the area around them including us.  It has to look like we are just minding our own business and sitting out at the campfire talking.”

             
“But maybe I should be the one scouting.”

             
“When I was four or five years old, my father who was a guide and a tracker like his father began to train me.  He would give me his hat and tell me to sneak up on a jack rabbit.  I was ten years old before I learned his ways and actually snuck up on one and caught it under that hat.  It would take me all day to move twenty feet without a sound and snag that rabbit.  You learn to move only when the wind blows and when the rabbit is not expecting to see any movement.  Taking you along would be as noisy as taking a pair of kangaroos in heat.  No my friend you must stay here.  The girls believe they are camped down river and up wind from our location.  If I am not back by morning, break camp and go home.  I will follow later and Chelsea will fly back before sunrise.”

             
“Okay you are the expert at this.”

             
“Iolana remember to keep your head down.  Iolana can help you start to break down our camp but she too will have to fly back before the morning’s sun.  If you find yourself alone, keep that weapon handy.  Remember, these creatures are at home both in the daylight and the night.  If anyone approaches you in shorts and a t-shirt be ready to draw down on that person.  If he is not wearing shoes as well he could be one of them.”

             
“How are you going to travel out to find those creatures if they are standing guard over their camp?”

             
“I’m going to float down river holding on to a log.  Once I make it past their campsite, I will exit on the opposite bank and Chelsea and I will stay on the rocks next to the water’s edge and walk back.  If all goes well, we should be back before you have to leave.”

             
Crosley looked around and crawled into the water.  He pulled his log into the water and covered his face with mud and brush.  He pushed himself out to the middle of the stream and ducked down and began to float toward the werewolf campsite.

             
Tom drank some coffee from a tin cup as he watched Chelsea swim across the stream and pull herself up on the other bank.  She stood there watching the log begin to slowly move down toward the camp of the werewolves.  Tom noticed that she was careful not to allow her short hair to go beneath the water while making the crossing.

             
“I don’t understand.”

             
“What don’t you understand my love?”

             
“How can they pick up your scent if you transform into something like a bat?”

             
“Actually that makes the scent even stronger.   No matter what we change into the Keratin still stays on our skin.  The smaller the object we change into the more concentrated the keratin and its odor become.”

             
“Do you think they are watching us now?”

             
“I do not hear anything yet, but I suspect that if they think you are just a couple of ordinary guys fishing, I am sure that from time to time someone does come out to check on the two of you.  After all, they do love to kill and attack people.  I think there is a real good chance that someone is deciding now even at this moment whether killing you and Crosley so close to their base is doable and could be done without them having to relocate.”

             
“So while Crosley and Chelsea are out scouting them, we are bait?”

             
“We could be just that. If we are right regarding the location of their camp, I would put our odds of being attacked at fifty-fifty.  You must be quiet now so that I can try to hear them if they are out there.”

             
Tom took another sip of his coffee and remained as still as possible.  Iolana sat next to him with her head down.  Tom looked out at the trees all around them as the mild breeze created moving shadows from their campfire on the timbers.

***

             
As the mild current moved Crosley farther down river, he kept moving farther to Chelsea’s side.  He reached a point where he was actually walking on the bottom from time to time.  Only a portion of his head was above the timber.  His nose was pressed up against the bark as his eyes peered out at the opposite bank.  Chelsea threw a pebble in the water as a signal that she could see a campfire around the next bend.  She stopped and sat down to await Crosley’s return.  She could follow him no farther without creating a possibility of herself being detected.  She knelt down on the rocks of the shore and hoped that her true love would return safely.

             
Crosley was now moving closer.  He could see their campfire and several men sitting around.  There was a huge RV and a six wheel truck with a trailer attached that could hold four ATVs.  Two were missing.  He did note to himself that the two ATVs still on the trailer had camouflaged paint jobs.  He realized that the pair missing must have also the same paint and realized that the men that drove by their camp earlier must have been part of this wolf pack.  There was also a loaded pickup truck and two cars covered with canvas.  He began to try and count the size of the group.  They weren’t hunting a single werewolf but an entire pack!  He counted eight men in shorts, T-shirts and not one of them was wearing shoes.  He figured that this group had to have at least ten males between the ages of eighteen and thirty.  The question in his mind was there had to be at least one female, probably more but there was none that he could observe as he continued to float along the stream’s current.  He saw a pair of deer in the process of being gutted and cleaned but he never saw anyone doing the work.  He drifted farther down the river and began to travel out of viewing the camp as the other two ATVs returned.  They were camouflaged the same and only shadows of the riders could be seen as he passed out of view.

             
Crosley was now also close to being up wind from the camp.  It was time to paddle back to the opposite shore and hurry pass the camp and get downwind from their location before being detected.  His plan was to leave the water and run quietly straight out and away from the bank.  Once at a safe distance, he would turn once downwind from the site.  He would then return to the water’s edge and the rocks so that no scent trail would be left to someone in the pack to follow.  As he was putting distance between him and their campsite, he heard the ATVs start up.

***

             
Tom threw the last of his coffee out of the cup.

             
“Shhh… “

             
He didn’t realize that such a small sound would disturb Iolana as she continued to listen.  All Tom could hear is the slight breeze that continued to make the fire’s shadow and their shadows dance on the trees and bushes around them.  Iolana began to put on a pair of thick leather gloves.

             
“A pair of motor bikes or ATVs are coming this way.”

             
Tom looked at Iolana as she continued to keep her head down and still wearing Crosley’s hat.

             
“They have traveled past us… wait… the motors stopped.”

             
Tom had slowly moved his hand onto the weapon.

             
“One is now on foot… A second one is now on foot and both are headed this way.”