Hotwire (2 page)

Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the Taser. Maybe the salvia had a little something to do with it. He’d been chewing his wad for about fifteen minutes and he could already feel the effect. That was just one of the highlights of tonight.

Dawson looked for the camera hidden behind some low sweeping pine branches. Though it remained camouflaged he could see the green dot blinking only because he had helped Johnny set it up earlier, making sure the tripod blended in with the trees. No one else knew it was there. Being the geek in residence did have its advantages.

Dawson glanced around at the campground. They had stomped out an area for themselves in a secluded part of the pine forest where they probably shouldn’t have a frickin’ campfire. Johnny B said no one could see them from the road or the lookout tower, though it didn’t matter. Both would be vacant. On one side was an open field, a swell of tall rolling grass separated by a barbed-wire fence. On the other side was the thick beginning of ponderosa pine. About ten yards away the Dismal River snaked by. Dawson could hear the water tonight, just a whisper running over the rocks.

They had left their vehicles about a quarter mile down in a deserted turnoff, a two-tire trail worn into the knee-high grass. They had to climb over a barbed-wire fence to enter the forest. The trek was only the first test of the night but Dawson thought it revealed quite a lot about tonight’s guests. How they maneuvered and crawled over the sharp barbs showed just how capable they were. Whether they turned to help the next person get over or under the fence or if instead, they looked for assistance. Or worse,
expected
assistance.

That was another thing about Dawson that made him different from other kids his age. He liked watching how people reacted to each other, to their surroundings, and especially to the unpredictable. His generation had become mindless zombies, mimicking and copying each other, caught up in their own little worlds of
what is
rather than
what if
. That was probably what interested him most about Johnny’s experiments.

There were only seven of them here tonight and yet they still grouped together in their cliques. Johnny was surrounded by the babes, Courtney and Amanda. Tonight even Nikki had inserted herself into the cool clique, which disappointed Dawson. He had hoped that Nikki would be better than that. All three girls looked like they were hanging on every one of Johnny’s words, laughing and tossing their hair back then tilting their chins in that way girls do to show their interest.

That was okay. Johnny was good at looking like it was his club, his party. Quarterback, homecoming king, he was charming but with just enough of a badass attitude that nobody challenged him. Being Johnny’s friend was safer than being someone who annoyed him.

Dawson wasn’t quite sure why Johnny wanted the Taser. He didn’t need it. Johnny exuded confidence, even in those silly cowboy boots. Kids called him Johnny B and it was the coolest nickname. Dawson had even heard Mr. Bosh call out “Johnny be good” at one of the football games and then the man laughed like he expected just the opposite from his son and that it was perfectly okay with him.

The first flash of light came without a sound. Everyone turned but only briefly.

The second flash crackled overhead. Dawson thought it might be lightning but it blurred into blue and purple veins that spread over the treetops like a crack in the twilight sky.

Dawson heard “oohs” and “aahs,” and smiled to himself. They’re tripping out, enjoying the fireworks. He probably was, too.

He hadn’t used salvia before but Johnny B said it was better than anything from the family medicine cabinet and way more potent than regular weed. Johnny said it was like “rock’n’roll fireworks squeezing your brain, convincing you that you could fly.”

Dawson thought the stuff looked harmless. Green, the color of sage, with wide leaves and similar to something he’d find in his mom’s old flower beds.

God, he missed his mom.

Dawson squashed some more of the plant into a tight wad and stuck it into his mouth between his gum and cheek like chewing tobacco, no longer wincing at the bitter flavor.

Johnny had called the plant “Sally-D” and told them that the Indians used it for healing. “It’ll clear your sinuses, clean out your guts, soothe your aches, and erase the static in your brain.”

However, he also sounded this excited last week when he had them all snort the OxyContin he’d crushed into fine particles. He had been able to confiscate only two of the pills from his mom’s medicine cabinet so the effects—when crushed and spread out among a dozen kids—didn’t quite live up to Johnny’s promises. But here he was, once again, sounding like an infomercial, working his magic and getting them to give the new drug a try in the hopes of feeling good and being cool.

Less than a minute after Dawson’s second hit he felt light-headed, a pleasant mind-tickling buzz that disconnected him from the others as he watched them stumble and laugh and point at the sky. It was like he was watching from another room, in slow motion from a faraway galaxy right outside his bedroom window.

There was a deep bass rhythm pounding, pounding, pounding at the base of his skull. Tree branches started to sway. Their trunks multiplied, by twos then threes.

That’s when he saw the red eyes.

They were hidden in the bush, back behind Kyle and Trevor, right behind Amanda.

Fiery dots watched, darting back and forth.

How could the others not see this creature?

Dawson opened his mouth to warn them but no sound came out. He lifted his arm to point but he didn’t recognize his hand, yellow and green, almost fluorescent in the flashing strobe light that came out of the treetops. Waves of purple and blue crackled through the branches.

That’s when Dawson first smelled the heat. Almost like someone had left on a hot iron for too long. Then suddenly the smell was stronger, reminding him of scorched hot dogs on an open campfire—black, crispy, burned meat. Then he remembered they hadn’t brought any food.

The sensation started as a tingle. Static electricity traveled the airwaves. The others felt it, too. They weren’t “oohing” and “aahing” anymore. Instead, they stumbled, heads tilted upward, searching the treetops.

Dawson looked back at the brush for the fiery red eyes.
Gone
.

His head swiveled. He could hear a mechanical click in his head like his eyes had become a machine. Each blink scraped like a camera shutter. Every movement ticked and echoed in his head. His nostrils flared, sucking in air that singed his lungs. A metallic taste stuck in his throat.

The next flash of light sizzled, leaving a tail of live sparks.

This time Dawson heard shouts of surprise. Then cries of pain.

Suddenly the fiery red eyes came running out of the brush, racing straight at Dawson from across the campsite.

Dawson raised his arm, aimed the Taser, and pulled the trigger.

The creature reeled back, fell, and sprawled in the leaves, kicking up glowing stars that shot out of a bed of pine needles. Dawson didn’t wait for the creature to spring to its haunches. He turned and started running, or at least his legs did. The rest of him felt carried, shoved into the forest by a force stronger than his own feet.

It was all he could do to raise his arms and protect his face from the branches. They tore at his clothes and slashed his skin. He couldn’t see. The pounding at the base of his skull drowned out all other sound. The flashes were hot and bright behind him. In front of him, total dark.

He hit the wire hard. The jolt of electricity knocked him off his feet. He stumbled and felt his skin pierced and caught like a fish on a thousand hooks. The pain wrapped arrows around his entire body and stabbed him from every direction.

By the time Dawson Hayes hit the ground, his shirt was slick with blood.

TWO

FIVE MILES AWAY

“There’s no blood?” Special Agent Maggie O’Dell tried not to sound out of breath.

She was annoyed that she was having trouble keeping up. She was in good shape, a runner, and yet the rolling sand dunes with waves of tall grass made walking feel like treading water. It didn’t help matters that her escort was a good ten inches taller than her, his long legs accustomed to the terrain of the Nebraska Sandhills.

As if reading her mind, State Patrol Investigator Donald Fergussen slowed his pace for her to catch up with him. She thought he was being polite when he stopped, but then Maggie saw the barbed-wire fence that blocked their path. He’d been a gentleman the entire trip, annoying Maggie because she had spent the last ten years in the FBI quietly convincing her male counterparts to treat her no differently than they’d treat another man.

“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he finally answered when Maggie had almost forgotten she’d asked a question. He’d been like that on the drive from Scottsbluff, giving each question deliberate consideration then answering with genuine thought. “But yeah, no blood at the scene. None at all. It’s always that way.”

End of explanation. That had also been his pattern. Not just a man of few words but one who seemed to measure and use words like a commodity.

He waved his hand at the fence.

“Be careful. It could be hot,” he told her, pointing out a thin, almost invisible wire that ran from post to post, about six inches above the top strand of four separate barbed wires.

“Hot?”

“Ranchers sometimes add electric fencing.”

“I thought this was federal property.”

“The national forest’s been leasing to ranchers since the 1950s. It’s actually a good deal for both. Ranchers have fresh pastures and the extra income helps with reforestation. Plus grazing the land prevents grass fires.”

He said all this without conviction, simply as a matter of fact, sounding like a public service announcement. All the while he examined the wire, his eyes following it from post to post as he walked alongside it for several steps. He kept one hand out, palm facing her, warning her to wait as he checked.

“We lost five thousand acres in ’94. Lightning,” he said, his eyes following the wire. “Amazing how quickly fire can sweep through the grass out here. Luckily it burned only two hundred acres of pine. That might not mean much somewhere else, but this is the largest hand-planted forest in the world. Twenty thousand of the ninety thousand acres are covered in pine, all in defiance of nature.”

Maggie found herself glancing back over her shoulder. Almost a mile away she could see the distinct line where sandhill dunes, covered by patches of tall grass, abruptly ended and the lush green pine forest began. After driving for hours and seeing few trees, it only now occurred to her how odd it was that a national forest even existed here.

He found something on one of the posts and squatted down until he was eye level with it.

“Most forest services say fire can be good for the land because it rejuvenates the forest,” he continued without looking at her, “but here, anything destroyed would need to be replanted. That’s why the forest even has its own nursery.”

For a man of few words he now seemed to be expending them, but maybe he thought it was important. Maggie didn’t mind. He had a gentle, soothing manner and a rich, deep voice that could narrate
War and Peace
and keep you hanging on his every word.

At first introductions, he had insisted she call him Donny and she almost laughed. In her mind the name implied a boy. His bulk and weathered face implied just the opposite. His smile did have a boyish quality accompanied by dimples, but the crinkles at his eyes and the gray-peppered hair telegraphed a more seasoned investigator. But then all he had to do was take off his hat—like he did now so the tip of his Stetson didn’t touch the wire—and the cowlick sticking straight up at the beginning of a perfectly combed parting brought back the boyish image.

“Ranchers hate fire.” Donny paused to take a closer look at the wood post immediately in front of him. He tilted his head and craned his neck, careful not to touch the fence or the post. “The ranchers shake their heads at rejuvenation. The way they look at it, why destroy and waste all that valuable feedstock.”

Finally he straightened up, put his hat back on, and announced, “We’re okay. It’s not hot.” But then he tapped the wire with his fingertips like you check a burner to make sure it’s been turned off.

Satisfied, his huge hands grasped between the barbs, one on each strand of the middle two, separating a space for her.

“Go ahead,” she told him.

She had to wait for him to shift from a gentleman to a fellow law enforcement officer. It took a few minutes for his blank stare of protest to disappear. Then he finally nodded and readjusted his grip to the top two strands instead of the middle two so he could accommodate his longer legs.

Maggie watched closely how he zigzagged his bulk between the wires without catching a single barb. Then she mimicked his moves and followed through, holding her breath and wincing when she felt a razor-sharp barb snag her hair.