The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (18 page)

As was hers; she could
almost see the mean villains out there, making their evil plans,
stalking the innocent. They would hurt people if she and her sister
didn’t do something about it. They were hiding now, but she knew
they were there, behind a tree or lying on the ground concealed by
a bush or a heavily leafed plant. She smiled in anticipation. Then
frowned slightly, remembering her sister was moving as slow as
molasses this morning, postponing all of her fun.
Jeez Louise, what the heck is taking sooo
long!

Thoughts of her annoying
sister arrested suddenly. Her breath caught in her throat when she
realized
all
of
the family pets living with their grandmother were present. Whether
sitting on their hindquarters or laying on all fours either panting
or lounging in the rays of the sun, they were grouped together,
having placed themselves around her.

Mikalah’s frown
deepened.

They weren’t just
haphazardly about her either. They were “bracketing” her against
the back of the house as if they meant to protect her from
something in the yard. On her left, upon the ground, stretched her
grandmother’s dog. She was an aging German Sheppard named Kodiak,
who gave the appearance of resting. Her head nestled upon her two
front legs. Yet, Mikalah could see it was a rouse, for with every
bird-tweet or squirrel-chatter, Kodiak’s eyes and ears never
stopped moving. Her tan coat twitched every so often, as if she
anticipated something was to happen in the next second or
so.

On her right, sat a tiny,
black-colored, mangled dog, named Mugzy – it was her sister’s pet.
He was a Brussels-Griffon, though a lesser of the breed. He was a
toy canine with a squashed in face and a coat that never seemed to
untangle. Even if combed, it always looked the same – matted and
knotted. Most of the time, there were leaves and small twigs
twisted up inside it as well. He was always a stinky, hot mess, but
was so full of love and charisma, he was irresistible even to the
hardest of heart. Mugzy would find a way in, just like
water.

Today, as Mikalah glanced
over at him, he was perched upon his haunches, not even trying to
hide his vigilance, as the hulking Kodiak was attempting to do.
Rather, he was whipping his head back and forth much like a
Marakeet in the deepest heart of Africa. He seemed to look
everywhere at once, on the brink of a bark that never quite left
his throat and only produced a low grumbling down in the middle of
his chest. His focus
was
the entire back yard.
Why is he doing that?
thought
Mikalah, as she continued to peer out at the yard.
There is nothing out there.

She decided to look again,
but with greater scrutiny, just to make sure. From the furthest she
could see down to a few feet in front of where she stood, she saw
nothing out of the ordinary.

Her eyes to her brother’s
goofy cat, Garfield, next. He was yawning, atop a large upside-down
planter her grandmother was drying out in the sun (she was
transplanting one of her plants that had outgrown its current
residence and needed more room to grow). He was your typical orange
and white striped tabby, although a little larger than most,
because of his big fat belly. Everyone, but her brother, made fun
of him. He looked like a middle-aged man with a beer gut. He was
butt of many jokes and even more laughs. He looked
comical.

But, that wasn’t what got
her attention this particular day.

No, it was the fact that
Mugzy and Garfield weren’t doing their usual play fighting, running
around the yard as they typically would. Somehow, a third of an
acre was too closed-in for comfort and, more often than not, they
got on each other nerves. That was when the chase was
on.

Not today, though. They
were mere feet apart, and yet, they weren’t even looking at each
other. Instead, Garfield was posing like Kodiak, in a more cat-ish
way though, which meant he was completely stretched out, as far as
his spine could manage. His fore-legs and paws reaching out, claws
extending, then retracting, he was flexing those tiny muscles like
a bodybuilder. To Mikalah, it was his ears that gave him away. They
moved with two to three times the alacrity than the rest of him.
Constantly changing their position upon his small head, so swift,
Mikalah was certain, as with the other animals, he wasn’t missing a
single sound.

Again, Mikalah looked
about the yard, eyes and ears straining to see, to hear something.
Her imaginary foes had long scattered in the wake of the bizarre
behavior of their pets. But, there was nothing there. She was sure
of it.

The wind came again, cold.
A hair or two stronger than before, the lack of intensity from the
sun wasn’t enough to combat this sort of chill. In her young,
perceptive mind, the air seemed colder than it had been when she’d
first stepped from the house. That had only been a few minutes
ago.

She took a few steps
deeper, along the main pathway, into the yard.

All of a sudden, there was
an explosion of activity and motion, a blur of fur and hair as
all
three
animals
jumped to their feet, keeping pace with her step for step. Not for
an instant, did they break their protective formation around
her.

Mikalah stopped,
astonished at what she’d seen. She had played enough Call of Duty
with her brother and Uncle to know what the animals were doing.
Even though she was only eight years old, she even knew how
to
explain
what
they were doing – Garfield was taking the point, while the dogs
were taking up flanking positions, guarding her “3” and “9” from an
ambush.

Why were they doing
this?
Mikalah said to herself again,
completely confused.
What was out here
that would make them act together like security guards trying to
protect the President or something?

Mikalah’s thoughts were
shattered when out of nowhere came –

“
Hey Mikalah, you gotta
come and see this!”

“
Aaah, crap, Elena, you
scared me like crazy!”

It was her sister yelling
from the small porch at the backdoor of their grandmother’s house.
Only the upper part of her body craned through the portal and into
the cold air.

“
Sorry…! But come on
inside, you have to see what Tony and Niño are doing, ok?” Elena
repeated. She didn’t wait to see if her sister would indeed follow.
She merely leaned back into the house and closed the door in her
excited state. Mikalah could only frown at the portal in
consternation. She heard her sister’s muffled footfalls as she
climbed the stairs to the second floor of the house, where her
uncle lived.

“
What a
retard,” Mikalah muttered aloud, making her way back the way she
had come, grabbing the toy guns and made her way back to the
house.
Well, at least, she’s not crying
like a big baby anymore,
thought the
dark-haired girl.

Whether or not she noticed
the animals shift and reform their protective formation about her,
she gave no outward indication. Whether or not she saw them take up
guard-like positions just outside the door as she walked through
it, her expression didn’t reveal any such realization. The girl,
frowning and more than a little confused, merely followed her
sister inside the house and up to her uncle’s TV room. She knew
they’d all be there, watching something Elena had got all worked-up
over.

Five seconds later,
Mikalah found them precisely where she expected to find them,
playing
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
2
on her uncle’s Playstation 3. Even
before she reached the top of the staircase, she could hear the
explosions and the loud voices of her uncle and her brother. Every
now and then, the piping, excited appraisal of her sister - all of
them were completely engrossed in the game.

She entered her uncle’s TV
room, her eyes already on the 50-inch HD flat screen her uncle had
bought a few years back. Her eyes were intent upon the typical top
and bottom splitting of the screen. This told her they were playing
in two-player mode. From the way they were talking both to each
other and on their headsets, she further deduced they were playing
as a team against some other bunch of guys (or gals), somewhere in
the vastness of the online experience.

“
Move to the right,
Ernie,” said Anthony to his uncle as he maneuvered his own
simulated soldier around a wall or what was left of one. “The guy
is behind the same wall I’m hiding behind right now, only on the
other side.”

“
Are you sure?” uttered
their uncle, though he followed the instructions Anthony had given
him without pause. “How can you remember all that?”

“
I don’t know it’s almost
like I memorized the whole map, but in like three dimensions. I
could see everything in my mind, clearly. It’s kinda like I could
see it almost as if I was there… like a dream,” he tried to
explain, but knew he fell miserably short. His uncle merely
grunted. “I think if you make a quick left turn around that pile of
debris, you’ll see the guy,” continued Anthony as he instructed his
“guy”, via the controller in his hands, to switch to a grenade. He
had the toon make ready to toss it over the wall, and then: “Oh,
crap, Ern… I think the whole team is here just on the other side of
the damned wall! How did they sneak…?”

Next to him, she could
hear her uncle give commands through his headset to the four other
people who were playing on their side, imploring them to follow his
“guy” in and strike the moment Anthony’s “guy” tossed the grenade.
It only took them seconds.

Ernie said quietly, “Throw
the grenade, Tones…”

On screen, Mikalah watched
as her brother’s toon tossed the grenade over the wall. Then, from
her uncle’s perspective in the game, she could see the object fall
right into the middle of a group of six commando-like figures and
explode.

KA-BLAM!

The surround sound
speakers blasted with noise just as Ernie’s “guy” and the rest of
the team flooded around the burning debris pile and blasted the
remaining troopers with what Mikalah figured was at least a
thousand bullets. Without warning, the screen changed. Both her
brother and her uncle cheered aloud, “high-fiving” one another.
Apparently, they’d won the game or at least this round of
it.

Mikalah looked over at
Elena. “This is what you brought me up here for?”
Damn, you can sure ruin a nice few hours of
playtime with your dumb ideas sometimes!

“
Yeah, look at the score,
Mikalah,” replied her sister, still staring at the flat
screen.

Mikalah’s eyes shifted
back to the TV. At first, she was just looking at a bunch of
numbers she didn’t understand. She was about to say something when
Elena prompted her by pointing to a specific area on the surface of
the TV. Then, she realized what she was looking at. Her eyes nearly
bulged out of her head. She had already surmised they were playing
in Team Death Match mode, which was an all-out team vs. team round
wherein the winner was the declared when a given team registered
120 collective kills. But, that wasn’t what had made her gape in
shock.

She had seen her brother
and her uncle play this game repeatedly, in almost every mode
possible, but not once had she seen the kill score read:

Kills - Team “Fire Ants”:
120

Kills – Team “Skull”:
7

Never.

“
Were you guys playing a
bunch of low ranking players or what?” asked Mikalah. She was quite
familiar with this game.

“
Nope,” was her uncle
Enrie’s quick reply.

“
Did the entire team keep
playing through the entire round or did they leave like one guy
hanging to get slaughtered by you guys?” was her next question out
of her mouth.

“
Nope,” again her uncle
answered her.

“
Did they accidently kill
themselves a bunch of times with like their grenades or
something?”

Again, “Nope”

“
Then how…?” Mikalah
muttered under her breath as she glanced at her brother, who was
smiling back at her like some goofy dog with his tongue half
lolling out of his mouth.

Her uncle suddenly sat up
straight and turned to look at the young girl. “You gotta ask this
dude over here.” He pointed at Anthony. “He kept saying he knew
exactly where they were, even when they hadn’t fired their weapons
for a long time or spawned after being killed. You know, in both of
those cases, there are no little red dots indicated on the
mini-map, telling you where your enemies are located. He kept
saying follow me or go over there, or hide here for a while and
will bring them down this ally, etc., etc., etc. And, every time we
did what he said to do, we either ambushed them or killed them
quickly. They had absolutely no chance against us. Our placing was
perfect, even the timing was awesome. Tony knew where they were on
the map or where they were going. It was sort
of…freaky.”

He glanced back at
Anthony. “Man o’ man, Boy, that was the best tactical fighting I’ve
ever seen. All the guys on our team were saying the same thing. We
didn’t even need to strategize. We were killing them too fast.
There was simply no need.”