by Norsebard
Contact: norsebarddk@gmail.com
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DISCLAIMERS:
This short horror-humor-mash up is to be categorized as an Uber. All characters are created by me, though some of them may remind you of someone.
The story contains some profanity. Readers who are easily offended by bad language may wish to read something other than this story.
All characters depicted, names used, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. No identification with actual persons is intended nor should be inferred. Any resemblance of the characters portrayed to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The registered trademarks mentioned in this story are © of their respective owners. No infringement of their rights is intended, and no profit is gained.
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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:
Written: May 11th - 15th, 2021.
This is the tenth story about Wynne Donohue and Mandy Jalinski. They were introduced in the short story Silent Invasion in the anthology Book Of Chills, Volume 2, and returned in Forever We Must Travel, They Came From The Desert, Home Of The Plum Unlucky, Goblins Galore, Monkey Business, Thunder & Frightening, Valentine's Woes and Haunted Highway — all stories are available at the website of the Royal Academy of Bards.
- Thank you for your help, Phineas Redux! :D
As usual, I'd like to say a great, big THANK YOU to my mates at AUSXIP Talking Xena, especially to the gals and guys in Subtext Central. I really appreciate your support - Thanks, everybody! :D
Description: The citizens of the quiet desert town of Goldsboro, Nevada thought they had already seen it all when another chapter of chaos and mayhem is added to the town's checkered history: a US Air Force convoy transporting a top secret shipment is to be driven straight through Main Street en route to a classified destination. Wynne Donohue and Senior Deputy Mandy Jalinski soon have their hands full trying to rein in the inevitable calamity…
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LEAPIN' LIZARD!
At a quarter past ten in the morning of a mid-August day, the strong rays of the sun had burned off the chill that always swirled in from the vast, beautiful desert during the nights. The dry heat had already begun to build, and the familiar haze shimmered above the wide-open plains beyond the collection of trailers that had been set up in a somewhat random pattern eight miles south of Goldsboro, Nevada.
The neatly-kept lawn and gravelly pathways between the trailers already saw plenty of activity: the young Renee Tooley played mini-soccer with a yellow ball, a tiny goal and several of her dolls that acted as her team. Her dead-tired mother observed her from the stairs of their trailer holding a cup of strong coffee and smoking a cigarette.
Estelle Tooley had returned from her early-morning cleaning job in Cavanaugh Creek just in time to give her husband Frank the briefest of kisses before he would leave for his own job as a carcass handler in one of the slaughterhouses connected to the cattle ranches; then she needed to wake up their daughter, make breakfast for her and wait for the school bus to swing by. Only after all that had been accomplished could she collapse onto her bed for a much-deserved nap.
The latest arrivals to the trailer park, the married couple Brenda and Vaughn Travers, were about to leave for their latest work assignment down south in Lansingburg - they were both IT developers and were helping a small firm setting up their business - but Brenda just had time to perform her regular morning yoga routines on an exercise mat in a quiet corner of the lawn. Initially, everyone else had stared at her in such wide-eyed stupors that she had needed to explain in great detail what she was in fact doing.
Of the other people living there, Diego Benitez was away visiting his half-sister in Sacramento for the day so his trailer was closed off and quiet; the elderly fellow Zoltan Petrusco had fallen ill from dehydration and had been admitted to the county hospital in Barton City to be kept under observation.
The final person of those living in the trailer park had in fact been the second one to move in: the late-forty-something Ernest 'Ernie' Bradberry. Goldsboro's finest handyman and jack-of-all-trades stepped out of his trailer and onto his front porch carrying a cardboard box so huge and unwieldy that he couldn't look past it.
He wore his sturdy safety boots as always, but he had forsaken his beloved drooping jeans for a pair of heavy-duty cargo pants that didn't exactly droop any less - it may have had something to do with his girth that only seemed to grow larger. Up top, he wore a red-and-green flannel shirt whose loosely-buttoned state revealed a formerly white undershirt and a ton of chest hair. Even further north than that, a well-worn Valvoline trucker cap had been mashed onto his unruly mullet that, with his retro sideburns and walrus mustache, formed an unbeatable one-two-three combination that was sure to awe anyone who had a hair fetish.
After moving off his porch with faltering steps due to the fact he couldn't see where he was going, Ernie staggered across the lawn on his way over to the trailer owned and inhabited by his good buddy Wynne Donohue and her main squeeze, the Senior Deputy Sheriff Mandy Jalinski.
"Good morning, Mr. Bradberry," Brenda Travers said during an impressive stance known as the Hovering Hummingbird.
"Mornin', Mrs. Travers," Ernie replied in a voice muffled by not only his mustache but by the close proximity of the cardboard box.
A few seconds went by before Brenda let out an urgent: "Oh… hold it! You need to take a couple of steps to the left or else you're going to crush a Barbie doll!"
Unable to look past the edges of the box, Ernie stopped his forward motion at once and took a single step to the left. "Wouldn't wanna do that if I can help it. Was that enough?"
"No, you need one more…"
Another step followed that was met by a grin and a thumbs-up by Brenda Travers. When she realized Ernie wouldn't be able to see either of her gestures, she let out an "Yep, you're all good!" instead.
---
Continuing, Ernie eventually made it across the lawn and around the corner of Wynne's trailer. He didn't want to crouch down to ease his grip on the huge box out of a wholly justifiable fear that the seat of his cargo pants might not survive the crouching - instead, he drew a deep breath and shouted: "Wynne, ya ol' rascal! I got somethin' here I know you're gonna love!"
Nearly a minute went by with no activity before the trailer's inner door opened to reveal a tall, dark-haired woman wearing an oversized T-shirt and little else. The mid-forty-something Wynne Donohue's skin was flushed, her hair was severely tousled and her oversized T-shirt was not only on backwards but inside-out as well. She stared at the large cardboard box that had sprouted legs, hands and a red-white-and-blue trucker cap - the rest of Ernie was out of sight.
Down at Wynne's bare feet, a furry head belonging to her Golden Retriever Goldie peeked out of the screen door to see what the hubbub was about. The dog let out a brief, puzzled yap at the sight of the cardboard box but soon lost interest and moved back to her doggy-basket.
"Why Ernie Bradberrah, whaddindahell is that there big-ass thing y'all be haulin' around he'?" Wynne said while she reached up under her T-shirt to scratch a rather bare cheek.
"Old Nascar tapes!" Ernie said from somewhere behind the box. "From my swappin' buddy over in Tennessee! Hey, don't leave me hangin' here, Wynne… I need to put down this-"
"Lawrdie, y'all coudden ha' hit a worse time had ya aimed fer it!" Wynne said while she pulled down her T-shirt so it wouldn't flutter up and give her friend a stroke or a coronary. "Fer cryin' out loud, Ernie! Me an' mah sweet, li'l de-per-ty wus jus' havin' a perdy dang fih-ne mornin', catch mah drift? Lookin' through them swappin' tapes sure does sound awesome an' all, but not right now, son!"
"Oh… huh. Okay," Ernie said while he tried to peek past the box - he soon gave up. "Sorry 'bout that, Wynne. I'll be back in… what? Ten minutes?"
"Ah beg ya pardon?! Ten minutes?! Why, Ernie Bradberrah, that does it… now Ah'm insulted! No soonah than half an hou-ah… bettah make that a full hou-ah. Yessir. Aw, Ah hear somebodda callin' mah name an' Ah sure ain't gonn' make her wait a second longah. See ya latah, ya ol' sombitch," Wynne said before she closed the inner door and left her friend high and dry.
"Uh… yeah," Ernie said before he took a step back from the screen door. After a few moments, he shrugged, turned around and staggered back around the corner of the trailer.
---
Ernie didn't return to Wynne's trailer before an hour and fifteen minutes had passed just to be on the safe side in case the main dish had been so good the ladies had gone back for dessert. Having learned from the initial mishap, he had left the heavy box in his own trailer; instead, he carried a bucket filled with a selection of cans from H.E. Fenwyck's premium line of products.
When he was met by Goldie and her dark-furred companion, the German Shepherd Blackie, playing tag near the back porch, he knew he was in the clear. Grinning, he stepped up onto the crooked porch and knocked on the screen door. "Wynne? How about now?" he said and pushed his Valvoline cap back to have room to wipe his brow.
The inner door was soon opened to reveal Wynne attired in a pair of home-cut jeans shorts and a faded T-shirt advertising a long-discontinued brand of chewing tobacco. Her hair was slicked back after her recent shower which almost gave her a mermaid-like appearance. Barefoot to begin with, she soon stuck her twinkletoes into a pair of purple bathing flip-flops that were practical if not exactly fashionable. "Yuh. Yuh, now's a lot bettah, Ernie," she said sporting a wide grin. "Say, what done happened ta that there big-ass box o' tapes y'all wus hidin' behind?"
The familiar sounds and smells of a busy coffee machine wafted through the open doorway to offer a hint of what was happening in the trailer's small kitchenette; similarly, constant splashing of water and faint singing from the bathroom offered a hint that Wynne's better half was busy as well.
"Well, I was hopin' you'd help me carry it over here… in exchange for a few cans of goodies, of course," Ernie said and held up the bucket.
"Now ya be talkin' mah lang-witch! All-righty, lemme find mah gloves an' I'll come right ovah. Two minutes, yuh?" Wynne said before she went into the living room to get her pair a sturdy work gloves.
---
By the time the compact but buff and highly athletic Mandy Jalinski stepped out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed, fully blow-dried and generally looking swell, plenty of ooooooh's and ahhhhhhh's greeted her from the living area of their trailer. When she recognized Ernie's voice doing some of the ooooh'ing, she pulled the bathing towel off her shoulder and wrapped it around her body before she slipped into the bedroom adjacent to the bathroom to finish up.
It wasn't too long before she came back out fully dressed. Now transformed into the Senior Deputy Sheriff of Goldsboro - which was a part of MacLean County's Sheriff's Department - she went straight over to the coffee machine and poured herself a mugful. Wynne had already prepared a bun on the open-faced toaster, so all Mandy had to do was to turn it on and twist the timer. The heating elements soon turned orange indicating it was active.
Decked out in her smart new uniform, she certainly looked the part: shiny, black boots, dark-gray pants with a pale-gray stripe down the outside of the legs, a sturdy canvas belt, a dark-gray, long-sleeved shirt with pale-gray shoulder straps and pockets, and finally a dark-gray Mountie hat that she had yet to don.
The new uniforms were created from fabric of a much higher quality than the old brown horrors that had been nothing but Polyester and poor stitching. After the frustrating mess regarding the sizes and cuts had been cleared up - the company sewing the uniforms had forgotten to take into account that male and female deputies had differing measurements in various spots - all law enforcement officers in MacLean County agreed that the new uniforms formed a night-and-day difference to the old ones.
The timer on the toaster finished ticking and let out a tinny ding! which indicated it was done. The bun would normally be best if toasted on both sides, but Mandy didn't have time to wait for that on this particular morning - their early-morning romantic adventure had certainly been rewarding but also time-consuming. She nabbed the steaming-hot bun straight off the toaster and took a cautious bite of it. It wasn't too scorching all things considered, so both halves had soon been wolfed down supported by several swigs of coffee.
Moving over to the doorway leading to the living area, she couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of two grown-ups sitting cross-legged on the floor between several piles of old-fashioned videotapes. Wynne and Ernie were as cheerful as toddlers who had just discovered the joys of a teething ring, and whenever they read the label on one of the tapes that had come from the box, another loud oooooh! was uttered followed by a debate on the relative merits of the race or the winner.
A piece of paper had been torn into four squares of which three were used to identify the piles: predictably, the one closest to Wynne was marked 'General Motors victories' while the one nearest Ernie read 'Ford victories.' The remaining square read 'Dodge/Chrysler And Other Stuff,' but that pile was tiny compared to the other two.
Mandy glanced at her wristwatch - the hands of time moved as merciless as ever, so she chugged down the rest of the coffee and strode back into the bedroom to get her utility belt, her jacket, her Mountie hat and finally her service pistol from the secure cabinet.
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Down on the floor of the living area, Wynne reached into the box to get the next tape. "Tallahdegah nineteh-seven. The Winston five-hundred… Fohrd," she said and handed it to Ernie who put it on his pile at once. "Wussen that the fastest evah supahspeedway race or some such? The one without any yellahs?"
"I believe so," Ernie said and reached for the next tape. "Huh… Watkins Glen eighty-nine. Ah… that was Rusty in a Ford."
Wynne shook her head at once - it made her slick locks fly all over. "Hold 'em hosses right there, Mistah Ernie Bradberrah! Rusty wus drivin' the white-an'-green Koah-diak Pontiac that year! That wus Raymond Beadle's numbah twentah-seven cahr!"
"You sure?"
"Lawrdie, friend, y'all bettah not be questionin' mah knowledge o' that there Winston Cup! Okeh, I ain't too cert'in on them first couple o' years aftah oh-one an' all 'cos I kinda lost interest there fer a while aftah that there you-know-what done happened at Daytohna, but eighteh-nine is an' wus a whoooole 'nother story, son! Rusty wus drivin' a Pontiac an' it wus his championship season."
Before Ernie could come up with a reply, Mandy let out another chuckle from the doorway. She had returned in time for the brief argument and could only shake her head at the silliness. "Forget the crises on the stock market or international politics. The real crunch is who drove what car thirty-odd years ago," she said with a smile.
"Yuh. Yuh, them facts sure be kinda im-pahr-tant," Wynne said before she broke out in a matching smile. The need to reconnect after their fine morning was too strong to ignore, so she clambered to her feet and soon closed the distance to the other half of her heart and soul.
A sizzling blue-on-green gaze was followed by a tender caressing of Mandy's soft cheek and eventually a kiss that was far more chaste than those shared earlier in the day - although Ernie had his back turned to them, they did in fact have an audience. "Stay safe, yuh?" Wynne said before she reached for Mandy's hands to give them a little squeeze.
"I will. Most of my day will be spent in meetings with the members of the Town Council. I suspect they'll debate endlessly about the sorry state of the Sheriff's Department in Goldsboro."
"Ugh…" Wynne said and rolled her eyes. "Which one o' them there de-per-ties gonn' pick ya up taday?"
"Rodolfo. I think I'll go out and wait for him… that way, you and Mr. Bradberry can argue all you like about what did or didn't happen thirty years ago," Mandy said and quickly got up on tip-toes to place a kiss on her partner's lips.
"Haw! An' we sure as stink on shoot will! Y'all bettah bah-lieve it! Ain't that right, Ernie?"
"Oh-ho, yeah!" Ernie said from his spot down on the floor. He had just found a real goodie of a classic race - the 1991 Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan International Speedway - so he didn't have time to look up. If he had, he would have seen Mandy shake her head at his expense.
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Ten minutes later, one of the white-and-gold Dodge Durangos from the MacLean County Sheriff's Department made a U-turn across the State Route and came to a halt by the dirt road that led to the trailer park. Mandy climbed aboard at once and they were soon off driving back to Goldsboro.
Deputy Sheriff Rodolfo Gonzalez, the mid-thirty-something Mexican-American with the trademark slicked-back hair, movie star looks and friendly disposition, had an expression of pure embarrassment written all over his face - it may have had something to do with the curious fact that he wore one of the outdated brown uniforms rather than his regulatory dark-gray fatigues.
Mandy was about to make a query about the uniform when Rodolfo beat her to it: "I was ironing my new uniform. Dolores called. My pants caught fire."
"I see. Hate it when that happens."
The reply was delivered in such a deadpan that Rodolfo needed to shoot a sideways glance at his senior deputy to see if she was joking or being gravely serious. The first glance didn't reveal anything, and he didn't dare to try a second time. "Ah… yeah," he mumbled before he concentrated on keeping the Durango pointed in the right direction.
"How is Miss de la Vega these days?" Mandy said after a moment of silence.
"She's great, thank you. Working endless hours as always," Rodolfo said and let out a short sigh. "Some days, she's never off the phone. I didn't expect that being a livestock trader was such a stressful job… but I guess it is. Yeah… how's Wynne this fine morning?"
A wide, goofy smirk exploded onto Mandy's face; it only lasted for a few seconds before she caught it and wrestled it back into the silly-box it had come from, but Rodolfo had noticed. Grinning, he abstained from making further comments.
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Rodolfo eventually dropped Mandy off at the curb in front of Wyatt Elliott's hardware store on the aptly named Second Street. Since the items on the meeting's agenda were all local and somewhat urgent, the Goldsboro Town Council had decided to convene in Wyatt's large and luxurious office rather than renting one of the conference halls up north in Barton City like they usually did.
Mandy nodded several hellos and howdys to customers who came out of the store carrying all the typical items needed to get by out in the boonies. A few of the friendly folks wanted to strike up a conversation with her, but she had to tell them that she had been summoned to a meeting so she needed to move on.
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Just over half of the upper floor of Wyatt's hardware store had been converted into a luxurious bachelor pad that had all the expected creature comforts. Although it wasn't quite on the level of those found in Las Vegas, Goldsboro's biggest fop was more than happy about what he had at his disposal.
The remaining part of the floor saw a handful of small and medium-sized offices - however, none of those even came close to rivaling the splendor found in Wyatt's managerial office at the end of the corridor.
As Mandy stepped into the secretary's office and took off her Mountie hat as per the regulations, Wyatt's personal assistant rolled her swivel-chair away from a workstation computer to offer the latest guest a photocopy of the Town Council's session agenda. It was a brief one as it seemed only three items were to be discussed.
"Thank you," Mandy said as she moved over to the nearest wall so she could lean against it. Her eyes quickly took in the three items and their meaning; the meeting's first point of discussion was already playing out inside the large office, but since she had no direct part to play in that, she preferred to wait for whenever Mary-Lou Skinner or one of the other council members summoned her.
The first item on the agenda was simply whether or not Arthur 'Artie' Rains was fit to continue as the Sheriff of Goldsboro. The endless stream of bitter complaints and barked insults that wafted through the door to the office left no question as to the identity of the speaker. The words continued to grow louder and more aggressive until a chair was finally shoved back with great force.
Two seconds later, the door was flung open and the doorway was filled by the familiar figure of Sheriff Rains. Standing at six-foot-three in boots, the man's two-hundred-and-forty pound frame, wobbly double-chins, bulbous nose and bushy eyebrows were enough to terrify most people into submission. His permanent scowl and intense, angry eyes convinced the rest they might as well give themselves up before he'd play a billy-club fandango across their backs.
Although he wore one of the new dark-gray uniforms, it had turned messy as a result of the late night and early morning he'd had at Derrike Iverson's bar to steel his resolve for the important meeting. He and his uniform reeked of cigar smoke, stale beer, cheap perfume and even cheaper whisky, and the top two buttons of his shirt had vanished without a trace. He had tried to hide the little accident by re-arranging his regulatory necktie, but the clothing item had a hard time fitting around his fat neck even on the best of days, so it failed to do the task expected of it.
The air seemed to crackle as Mandy and Sheriff Rains engaged in an age-long staredown. In reality, it only lasted ten seconds before the Sheriff hooked his boot onto the lower edge of the office door and kicked it shut with such force that dust trickled down from the frame. Once that had been accomplished, he stomped over to Mandy's spot by the wall, got too close for anyone's comfort and put his hands on the wall on either side of her head to trap her. "Manly," he growled in a voice still laced with booze, "I hope you're happy now. Those high an' mighty sons of bitches in there just fired my ass. They threw me away like I was some Goddamned piece of trash! After all I've done for this stinkin' town!"
Mandy refused to be intimidated by Artie Rains' overwhelming presence and simply stood firm. "Wasn't my doing," she said in a steely voice.
Rains harumphed and moved away from the aggressive stance. Running a meaty paw through his thinning hair, he moved over to the opposite wall of the secretary's office. There, he turned around to shoot Mandy another angry glare. "Hell, I even believe ya. But the fact remains that you have the most to gain. Lemme tell ya something, Manly…" - he waved a fat index finger at Mandy - "This job ain't a barrel of laughs. The buck stops at your desk now. It's gonna be your ass in the hot seat. Do you understand that? Hell, I don't think you do. There's a lot more to it than I think you realize."
After wiping his flushed face on his sleeve, he moved away from the wall and stomped over to the exit. "Forget it. You'll find out soon enough. I give you six months tops before you break out pukin' just thinkin' about those asshole politicians and their holier-than-thou bullshit." With that, he slammed the outer door shut behind him and stomped down the stairs.
The cheeks of Wyatt Elliott's regular secretary had turned crimson after being an involuntary witness to the embarrassing exchange, and she kept her eyes down on the keyboard to avoid looking at Mandy - not that the senior deputy seemed affected at all.
When the door to the office opened once more and Councilwoman Mary-Lou Skinner popped her head out, Mandy grunted and moved away from her own wall to head into the lion's den.
---
Quite why Wyatt Elliott had believed he needed an office the size of the Presidential suite at the Ritz in New York City had become lost in the murky mists of time, but the fact remained that the rectangular room measured sixty by thirty feet. The far end of the room was dominated by a huge mahogany desk that was beyond all sense of proportion considering the shop was merely a hardware store. The center section saw a horseshoe-shaped table that could seat twelve, and the end of the office nearest to the door had been turned into a lounge complete with exquisite armchairs, a four-seater sofa and a table made of teak wood and Italian marble. A classic Russian samovar tea-maker had been placed next to the sofa for those guests who simply couldn't get through the day without hot tea.
A pale-gray wall-to-wall carpet graced the floor while an additional genuine Persian rug had been put under the couch arrangement for extra padding there. Several tall plants in ceramic pots had been positioned at strategically sound spots along the floor so the leaves could attach themselves to the walls, climb toward the ceiling and eventually form a green canopy. There was less art on the walls than expected, and that was somewhat ironic considering the deathly dull view out of the four windows overlooking the gray asphalt of the inner courtyard.
Mandy chewed on her cheek as she stepped into the splendor holding her Mountie hat and the agenda in her hand. The Goldsboro Town Council wasn't complete, but six of the nine members were present. In addition to Mary-Lou Skinner who was the doyenne of the group, Brandon Moffatt, Konstantin Aranowicz, Campbell Taylor, Bonnie Saunders and finally Colleen Bolton sat at the horseshoe-shaped table looking somber and gray.
Although Mandy knew them all from around Goldsboro, she noted with some fascination that seeing them in a work-related setting was starkly different to meeting them at Moira's Bar & Grill, Grant Lafferty's liquor store or anywhere else around town - she couldn't help but think that they all looked a little indifferent about the whole thing like they had long since lost the passion that had led them to the Town Council.
The hefty Mary-Lou - who wore a salmon-colored dress with red highlights around the various hems - huffed and puffed as she lumbered back to her chair at the head of the table. An unfortunate side-effect of her many pounds came in the form of weak knees that would plague her whenever she needed to walk anywhere. Even the short distance from her house to a waiting car was a strain that would often require an extra dose of painkillers. Sitting down took some effort as well, so to catch her breath, she slid a pair of reading glasses up onto her nose and rearranged a pile of papers before she spoke: "Deputy Jalinski, please have a seat anywhere you like."
"Thank you, Councilwoman Skinner," Mandy said and made a beeline for the nearest of the high-backed chairs. After putting the agenda on the table, she pulled out the chair, sat down, crossed her legs at the knees and finally let her hat rest in her lap; as she did so, she closely observed the members of the town council sitting opposite her for any signs of life - there were none.
"All right, let's get started," Mary-Lou said as she used a pair of reading glasses to skim the agenda and a page filled with hand-written notes. "As you probably learned from Mr. Rains, the Town Council has terminated his contract as Sheriff with immediate effect. Frankly, Mr. Rains brought it upon himself after his inexcusable behavior at the recent SongBirds concert. It was only through a promise of swift and decisive action that we were able to avoid a high-publicity lawsuit that would have ripped the guts… pardon the colorful language… out of not only the MacLean County Sheriff's Department but this wonderful little town as well."
"I understand," Mandy said, remembering the painfully embarrassing incident on Main Street where then-Sheriff Rains had used racial slurs to get his points across. It was nothing new for the abrasive Rains, but a fan of the Country & Western group playing in Goldsboro had recorded the entire burst of spit-flying vitriol on a smartphone and had shared the video on all the major hosting platforms. The video had gone viral and had attracted the attention of so many lawyers it had been nearly impossible to wade through them all.
"Indeed," Mary-Lou continued before she took another glance at her notes. She took off the reading glasses and put them on the desk as she spoke on: "Therefore, this council has been forced to call an early election for the vacant position of County Sheriff. Seeing as how we only narrowly avoided disaster, we cannot appear to be chummy, or dare I say it, be in cahoots with any of the contenders regardless of their current position in our little society. In short, we cannot allow favoritism. This election must adhere to the official guidelines and proceed as any other."
Instead of echoing her earlier sentiment, Mandy simply nodded. Her face was set in stone as none of it came as a great surprise to her, but it irked her that she was forced to run an undoubtedly expensive election campaign against an unknown opponent, or perhaps even opponents, for a job she had already carried out whenever Sheriff Rains had been indisposed - which was often.
"Deputy Jalinski," Mary-Lou continued as she pinned Mandy to the spot with a surprisingly steely gaze, "do you wish to enter the running for the vacant position of County Sheriff?"
"I do, Councilwoman. Very much so."
"Very well," Mary-Lou said and wrote down Mandy's name on a separate piece of paper. "The Town Council will proceed to ask the remaining Deputies if they desire to enter the running as well. In case of negative responses, I'll contact Sheriff G.W. Tenney down south in Brandford Ridge. When he helped us during the crisis, he mentioned that his senior deputy was ready to take the step up. But that's for later."
Mandy furrowed her brow at the news. She knew that neither Barry Simms, Rodolfo Gonzalez nor Don Woodward - the temporary replacement for Thomas 'Tom Thumb' Kincaid - had even the slightest notion of ever running for sheriff, but Tenney's senior deputy was another story entirely. While G.W. had been in Goldsboro to help clean up the fallout, he had often mentioned his deputy's burning ambition of getting ahead in life in the shortest amount of time. It could prove a mountainous challenge to overcome. Grunting, Mandy shuffled around on the chair as Mary-Lou Skinner reached for her glasses and moved onto the next item on the agenda.
The Councilwoman read her notes for nearly half a minute before she made to get up. The strain was a little too much for her bad knees and legs after the eventful morning she had already been through regarding Artie Rains, so she gave up before she had even left the seat of her chair. Instead, she turned to Mandy. "Oh… Deputy, would you mind going out to the office and see if Lieutenant Colonel Pressley has arrived yet? If he has, please ask him to come in."
"Very well, Mrs. Skinner," Mandy said and got up at once. After moving over to the door in her usual hard-charging stride, she opened it and peeked out. A late-thirty-something Air Force officer with plenty of colorful ribbons on his pale-blue uniform and peaked cap was in fact leaning against the table seemingly trying to chat up Wyatt Elliott's secretary. The conversation was rather one-sided until Mandy butted in: "Excuse me, Sir… I presume you're Lieutenant Colonel Pressley. The Town Council is ready to see you now."
The officer piped down at once as he took in the sight of the compact, athletic woman talking to him. All the stereotypical features were present upon his face: a square jaw with a cleft chin, a hawkish nose, slanted cheeks and a pair of determined eyes set symmetrically under a military haircut - he looked like he had just stepped off a recruitment poster. "Excellent. Thank you, Deputy…?"
"Jalinski."
"Gesundheit," Howard G. Pressley said with a grin as he pushed himself away from the secretary's desk. He continued to chuckle at his own joke as he shoved his peaked cap under his arm and entered the office itself - predictably, Mandy found the joke to be less funny on the whole as she followed the important guest back to the horseshoe-shaped table.
-*-*-*-
Seventy-four minutes and several thousand words later, the Town Council meeting was finally adjourned. To beat the slower-moving people among the council members, the two uniformed individuals present made swift exits and moved down the staircase in perfect step.
Lieutenant Colonel Pressley seemed unaffected by the controversial topic that had been the final item discussed at the meeting, but Mandy's furrowed brow proved she was more than a little skeptical about the situation as it had been laid out by the officer - not the least because she knew they needed the full cooperation of the citizens of Goldsboro for everything to work out, and that only happened once every blue moon.
They soon reached the foot of the staircase and strode through the hardware store itself. As they exited the store and went onto the sidewalk out front, they attracted so many stares from the regular customers and the people who just happened to pass by that the Goodyear Blimp could have flown past at fifty feet's altitude without anyone noticing.
The tall Air Force officer and the compact Senior Deputy soon reached a gray staff sedan from the base further south. The chauffeur of the sedan - a young man wearing a pale-blue uniform like the lieutenant colonel's though without any of the older man's ribbons - quickly stomped out his cigarette and flew around to open the door for the important passenger.
Before Pressley could be driven back to the Air Force Base, Mandy took hold of the door so it couldn't be closed. The chauffeur stared at her for a few moments before a gesture by the officer made him nod and hurry back to the driving seat. "Lieutenant Colonel," Mandy said in a voice that she tried to keep neutral, "I understand fully what needs to be done tonight, but you need to understand it won't be easy for us to police. We only have four deputies. Upholding a strict curfew from eight-thirty tonight until dawn tomorrow will tax us to the limit. The slightest hiccup will spread our resources too-"
"Oh, I understand perfectly," Howard Pressley said as he moved onto the back seat of the gray sedan. "It is, however, the way it will be. I have my orders and now you have yours. Have a good day, Deputy."
Mandy clenched her jaw so she wouldn't speak her mind and get herself in trouble. After a few moments, she nodded, stepped back and slammed the door shut. She put her arms akimbo and watched the gray sedan leave the curb and drive out onto Second Street - it was soon at the intersection where it turned right to head south on Main Street.
She and her deputies now had a grotesquely long to-do-list to get through, and the sooner they got started, the more time they would have to sort through the inevitable mountains of complaints that were guaranteed to arrive once the residents of Goldsboro heard about the curfew.
Already planning the nitty-gritty of using the public announcement loudspeakers on one of the Durangos to inform the public, she strode along Second Street to get over to the sheriff's office.
She had barely set off before a long, angry-sounding honk and a host of shouted obscenities were heard behind her. A white Dodge truck had needed to come to a hard stop in the middle of Second Street when the driver of a rusty, badly dented Toyota pickup had simply burst out of an alley without a care in the world.
The driver of the Dodge soon leaned out of the opened window and yelled an entire dictionary's worth of inventive four-letter words at the other fellow. When the driver of the Toyota returned the favor in a more abbreviated fashion by showing the world that he had a middle finger and knew how to use it, it all went downhill double-quick.
Mandy let out a growl as she stormed over to the scene of the near-accident so nobody would get any bright ideas like starting a twelve-round heavyweight bout in the middle of the street. "Everybody, calm down!" she barked. "You in the Dodge, did you hit the Toyota?"
"No, Ma'am," the irate driver said while shaking his head.
"You can go about your business. All right?"
The man in the Dodge nodded before he slipped back behind the wheel and drove off.
"And you, Sir," Mandy continued as she strode over to the dented rustbucket, "let me see your license and vehicle registra-" She came to a verbal and physical dead stop when she clapped eyes on one of Goldsboro's most notorious barflies and semi-shady characters Robert Neilson. Clearly three sheets to the wind, the slovenly Neilson blinked several times as he tried to get his bearings.
Mandy had to count to ten on the inside before she grabbed hold of the door handle and yanked it open. The windows had been closed so she had no idea of the poor quality of the air inside the Toyota until it literally slapped her across both cheeks - a horrible stench of cheap liquor, cigarette smoke and rank body odor billowed out to greet her.
"Vacate your vehicle at once, Mr. Neilson," she said through clenched teeth. "You are being put into custody in our holding cell pending a thorough analysis of your level of intoxication."
It didn't seem the drunk driver was too happy to be bossed around like that as he shook his head and drew a deep breath to complain; Mandy was in no mood for fun and games so she reached in and took the keys from the ignition to stop him from taking off. Once they were safely in her pants pocket, she grabbed hold of his filthy hunting jacket and pulled him out of the truck.
Moving fast and efficiently, Mandy went through the customary procedure for handcuffing a potentially hostile individual which meant it didn't take more than eleven seconds for Robert Neilson to be leaning over the Toyota's left-front fender with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Mandy took a step back to survey the scene. Satisfied with the results, she retrieved her telephone and found the number for the sheriff's office in the registry.
'You've reached the MacLean County Sheriff-'
"Barry, this is Deputy Jalinski. I'm over at Wyatt Elliott's hardware store. Is Rodolfo still there?"
'Ah… yes he is.'
"Send him over here on the double. I'm detaining Robert Neilson for a suspected DUI. His truck needs to be driven over to the impound yard. Did you get that?"
'Yes, Depu-'
Mandy had no interest in listening to Barry stating the obvious so she closed the connection at once. After she had put the telephone in her pocket, she yanked Neilson off the Toyota's fender and shoved him closer to the nearest sidewalk so they could get off the street.
It only took two minutes for Rodolfo to arrive on foot, grimacing at the look of the detained individual who appeared well into a week-long bender:
An aura of stink filled the air in a ten-feet diameter around Neilson, and his breath was even worse. His hair was long, shaggy and greasy, his eyes were bloodshot and featured heavy bags halfway down his cheeks, and the stubble he carried all over the lower part of his face hadn't been dealt with for at least five days. His clothes were filthy and grungy from the top of the old baseball cap to the soles of the brown boots, and it looked like he had urinated in his pants more than once during the bender. All in all, he was a mess.
"Man… that's disgusting," Rodolfo croaked as he took in the sorry sight.
Mandy could only agree with the short but precise sentiment. "Drive the Toyota over to the impound yard while I deal with Mr. Neilson. Once you're back, contact Barton City and have them run the plate and the VIN through the DMV for any outstanding issues."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Something's come up that needs our undivided attention. We'll need to work non-stop for the rest of the day. Don't go out on patrol before we've talked," Mandy said and let out a sigh.
"Oh… sounds serious… will do, Ma'am."
After handing over the car keys, Mandy grabbed hold of Neilson's collar and dragged him back along Second Street to get to the sheriff's office - she had a hunch it would take a fair while to get the career drunkard's legs to cooperate.
Rodolfo watched the two people walking - staggering - away for a few seconds in case he was needed. When it appeared Mandy was on top of everything, he climbed onto the Toyota's seat and aimed for the ignition slot. A second later, he flew out of the truck at twice the speed he had employed when he got in. "Oh, Gawd…" he croaked as he slapped a hand onto his rear-end to figure out what he had just sat in.
The croak only grew louder when he pulled a slice of moldy pizza off the seat of his replacement uniform pants. He shot an Evil Eye at the offending slice before he threw it up onto the bed with a disgusted gesture.
His replacement pants were already beyond salvage, so he used them to wipe off his hands before he climbed back behind the wheel. The rest of the Toyota's cab was in no better shape when it came to litter, putrid leftovers and a general, brain-numbing stench, but since he didn't want to push it several hundred yards over to the impound yard, he had to bite the bullet and get it over with.
Sighing, he inserted the key and started the old truck's engine to get underway. The stench was so overpowering he had to roll down the window and drive all the way through Second Street and onto Main Street with his head sticking out just to be able to breathe.
"Madre Mia," he mumbled as he turned off Main Street and drove into the narrow alley that led to the impound yard behind the sheriff's office. "My poor pants… dammit! Now I gotta change 'em again and we're only just past noon! What else can go wrong today!"
-*-*-*-
The remainder of the day followed the usual pattern: Mandy and her deputies needed to do a little of this, a little of that and chug down plenty of re-heated coffee while doing so - except, of course, when they went out on foot patrol to see that everything was proceeding according to plan in the throbbing hot spot of activity known as Goldsboro, NV, Population 467 and counting.
The sheriff's office on Main Street hadn't seen any improvements when it came to the state of its interior. The felt tiles in the ceiling were still drooping, the strip lights were still on the blink, the brown linoleum on the floor was still cracked, the maps of Goldsboro and MacLean County that graced the wall behind the sheriff's desk were still forty years out of date, the door to the adjacent holding cells was still rusted shut, and two of the three desks were still overflowing with old case files that Sheriff Rains had not seen fit to file in the proper cabinets.
A plea to the Town Council and Mayor Holliman to get an emergency advance of the following year's budget to fix all the issues had been rejected on the grounds that they couldn't be seen to reward the local branch of law enforcement after the recent negative headlines - and that had been that.
Barry Simms did his worst to suffocate his fellow deputies by puffing away on his home-rolled cigarettes that contained nothing but the lowest-grade waste tobacco. Although he was nominally on duty at the watch desk and did indeed sit there, his frequent hacking and coughing fits forced Rodolfo Gonzalez to answer the ringing telephone on more than one occasion during the day.
As sickly-looking as always, Barry's skin was waxen and furrowed which gave him a somewhat creepy appearance. The paleness was offset by his yellow teeth and amber-tinged fingers from all the nicotine he had ingested over the years. His three-packs-a-day habit had caused Wynne to give him the nickname 'Mr. Sixty Cigs,' and that was a good fit on several levels - not only did he smoke at least that many cigarettes seven days a week, he looked as if he was sixty-six rather than his true age of twenty-seven.
Barry had in fact tried to reduce his heavy habit by hitting the nicotine chewing gum instead, but after several close calls where the gum had gone down the wrong pipe, he had given up on the artificial stimulants and had returned to the real thing.
Mandy sat at the former sheriff's desk across from the watch desk. After warily eyeing the hacking and spluttering Barry just in case he would keel over, she sighed and returned to the task at hand which was to pry open a reluctant drawer. Each time she pulled on the drawer's handle, the angle-poise lamp on the desk blinked on-and-off twice like it was trying to send an encoded message to the drawer to remain shut.
It soon dawned on her that the drawer wasn't merely stuck but actually locked. She went through the four other drawers to find the keys but came up short: still, the treasure hunt had earned her an empty bottle of Old Number Seven bourbon - Artie Rains' favorite brand - a single sock that had a gaping hole at the big toe, both halves of a cracked pencil and finally the stump of a movie ticket for a midnight showing of John Wayne's Rio Bravo.
Another sigh escaped her. "Barry, you wouldn't happen to know where Sheriff Rains kept the keys for his desk, would you?"
As soon as Barry opened his mouth to reply, he was overcome by another hacking fit that rendered him unable to do anything but cough and slam a fist against his chest. He simply shook his head as a response to Mandy's question. The moment the fit had receded, he lit a new cigarette with the dying embers of the old one, and another cloud of vile-smelling smoke soon rose toward the drooping felt tiles - perhaps offering a clue as to the cause of the sorry-looking state of the ceiling.
Mandy just sighed and leaned back on her swivel-chair.
She was spared more Barry-induced drama when Rodolfo and Don Woodward returned from a brief patrol of the town's mostly deserted streets. Don was on loan from Jarrod City as a temporary replacement for the abrasive Thomas Kincaid; he was a career deputy in his late forties with a fatherly face and a slightly plump figure that suggested he would never fare well in a foot pursuit or anything else remotely physical. His skills were of an organizational nature, and he had already worked wonders on the horrible mess found inside the metal filing cabinets located in the outer office and the crew room at the back.
"Rodolfo," Mandy said as she got up from the sheriff's desk, "do you know where the keys to this desk are? One of the drawers is locked."
Rodolfo had time to hang his Mountie hat on a nail on the wall and smooth down his slicked-back locks while he pondered the question. He eventually broke out in a shrug. "Hmmm… no. Perhaps in one of the other drawers?"
"No. I've already checked," Mandy said and walked over to the small table underneath the outdated map of Goldsboro. After taking the glass coffee pot, she poured herself another mugful of re-heated rocket fuel and took a long sip.
"Okay… maybe in Rains' locker in the crew room?"
"He was by earlier today to clean it out. Do you want to call him to ask?"
Rodolfo grimaced while he shuffled over to sit on a corner of the watch desk. "Ah, that would be a 'no,' Senior Deputy Jalinski…"
While the younger deputies had spoken, Don Woodward had reached into the right-hand side pocket of his uniform pants to retrieve a small leather pouch that contained a set of picks - they were guaranteed to open any type of reluctant lock in any type of door, filing cabinet or indeed desk drawer. "How about we tried it the old-fashioned way?" he said as he held up the metal tool.
---
Three minutes later, the contents of the drawer had been spread out on the desk top. The sour expression on Mandy's face proved she wasn't too happy to find several well-used and wadded-up tissues, an old crossword puzzle magazine accompanied by an eraser and a selection of suitable pencils, a half-full bottle of bourbon, four shot-glasses, three screwdrivers, a half-smoked cigar that had become as hard as concrete after the years spent in the drawer, and finally a pack of condoms.
"Oooooh, rubbers!" Rodolfo said and reached for the latter pack at once. "Preston-Farley Easy-Ons. The best kind… they've won several awards, you know. I wonder if Artie Rains would mind if I, uh, inherited them?"
Mandy squinted at her grinning friend. "You really want Rains' condoms, Rodolfo?"
"Well… yeah. It's not like they're used or anything… and they're even the right size. Large. Imagine that. I didn't think ol' Artie carried that kind of equipment," Rodolfo continued - his statement was backed up by a juvenile snicker and a wide, cheesy grin from Barry's spot across the office.
Don looked suitably embarrassed by the conversation, Barry's snickers soon turned to gross-sounding hacking and coughing, and Mandy just sighed. A few moments went by before she waved her hand in approval. "All right. Have fun with 'em. Who wants the crossword magazine?"
"I do," Don said, "that's my favorite pastime." He smiled broadly when he was given the collection of crosswords and began to leaf through it at once to see what kind of fun challenges awaited him.
Mandy swept the remaining items - save for the bottle of bourbon - into the nearest trash can in a symbolic gesture of sweeping the desk clean of Artie Rains' involvement in the Sheriff's Department. After paying a brief visit to the crew room to put the bottle in a safe place so nobody would feel tempted to take a sip, she dusted off her hands and slammed them onto her hips. "All right, the fun's over. Let's get back to work. Rodolfo, are people adhering to the curfew?"
"They are. Well, mostly. We ran into a couple of knuckleheads up at Iverson's, but that was to be expected," Rodolfo said while he tried to make the pack of condoms fit into the breast pocket of his brown uniform shirt. "We persuaded them to go home to their wives instead. The owner of the movie theater came out to meet us on the sidewalk. He isn't too happy-"
"I know," Mandy said and tapped an index finger onto a piece of paper on the desk, "he was by earlier to file a formal complaint about the unexpected loss of revenue."
"Okay… but other than those few individuals, the streets are empty."
"Good." Mandy was about to issue a new set of instructions to the deputies when a familiar voice from the doorway cut her off:
"Lawwwwwwr-die, whaddindahell's goin' on he' in Goldsborah tanight? I ain't nevah seen this he' li'l ol' town this de-suhr-ted befo', an' that's sayin' som'tin, lemme tell ya…"
After stepping inside the sheriff's office, Wynne turned to wave at Blackie and Goldie who were still outside in the chicken truck; then she shut the glass door behind her.
Unlike earlier in the day, she was now wearing the full outfit that marked her out as The Last Original Cowpoke: decorated cowboy boots, faded blue-jeans, a classic denim jacket over a black sweatshirt carrying the More Champions Trust Chevrolet-slogan in red, pale-brown sheepskin gloves, and finally her beloved, battered, threadbare and sweatstained low-crowned cowboy hat that sat just right to give her that special Tall, Dark & Sexy look.
"Howdy there, Barry… lookin' fih-ne as always, yuh? How's yer Auntie Mildred comin' along? Howdy, Rodolfo. An' Don! Nice ta fih-nally meetcha propah! We ain't really done no talkin' or nuttin' befo', but I be the one an' only Wynne Donohue, yessir! Slap it there, pardner," she said as she whipped off her gloves and put out her right hand for the traditional greeting.
After she and Don had shaken hands, Wynne shuffled over to Mandy who had sat down at the sheriff's desk. "So… whassup with ol' Goldsborah all of a sudden? Did I miss a pay-per-view rasslin' event or some such? I mean, even Moira's an' that there mooh-vie theatah 'r dark an' quiet an' that sure ain't happenin' too often."
"I take it you didn't get my message?" Mandy said as she picked up the formal complaint and slid it into a brand new folder.
"Well, yuh an' naw. I got a message on mah awf'lly smart, new-fangled telephone there, but I didden ha' time ta do nuttin' 'bout it at that there precise moment an' all 'cos I wus busy navigatin' the Nissahn along one o' them there deep-rutted dirt trails out near Oswald Creek. Ya know, that there hippie collective or whatevah them folks actually is-"
"There's a curfew in place for everyone but law enforcement personnel, Wynne… a full lockdown. It started at eight-thirty PM… twenty minutes ago," Mandy said and looked at her wristwatch; when she glanced up at the clock on the wall, she found it to be ten minutes late.
"Aw! Aw, shoot, I didden know nuttin' 'bout that or nuttin'," Wynne said and slapped her forehead. "But I ain't done all mah rounds yet! I still got a full second load o' fried chicky-stuff ta delivah down south an' if them chicky-dees ain't gonn' be delivah'd, them folks orderin' 'em gonn' be really P.O.'ed an' then mah bosses Mista Nelse an' Mista Trent gonn' be P.O.'ed with me an' then- whaddinda-wohhh-rld did y'all set up a curfew fer, anyhows?"
Don Woodward stared wide-eyed at Wynne and the barely comprehensible stream of words that had spewed from her. When he turned to Rodolfo hoping to get it translated into something approaching regular English, he was met by a grin and a shrug.
"It's Air Force business, Wynne," Mandy said. "I don't know anything except what I was told by Mrs. Skinner and a Lieutenant Colonel Pressley… and that was to uphold a curfew from eight-thirty tonight until dawn."
" 'r ya sure this ain't jus' a drill or som'tin? Y'all know how them military types like messin' with us reg'lar folks fer no good reason whatsoevah. Why, wussen it jus' last Eastah when they suddenleh done blocked off that there State Route fer days an' days… an' they didden give two shits about us reg'lar folks who coudden come ta town all of a sudden. Man-oh-man, I missed one o' them there im-pahr-tant pool tournaments an' all jus' because they wus playin' in that there big ol' sand box!"
"We'll soon find out," Mandy said and broke out in a tired smile.
"Yuh. I sappose we will. Lawrdie… this all got an oh-fee-shual ring to it, don't it? Mebbe them fly boys be haulin' som'tin from that there Air Force Base out yondah, yuh? Som'tin top-secret an' dain-gerous or som'tin. Yuh. An' they ain't interested in any sy-vilians seein' none o' it in case it done blows up or som'tin. Jus' like in that there horrah mooh-vie we done watched the othah evenin'… the one where some escapin' chemical agent done killed neahleh ev'rbodda in a desert town. 'member? Good shit almighty, that wus a scary mooh-vie… an' now we gonn' have a rerun right he' in Goldsborah, dag-nabbit!"
"I'm sure it won't be that bad," Mandy said and got up from the swivel-chair to end the conversation. Don and Rodolfo had been studying Wynne's impressive, sculpted presence while the Last Original Cowpoke had spoken, but the gesture from their senior deputy convinced them to move back to the other desk to resume working on the case files.
"Well, ya nevah can tell," Wynne said and scratched her forehead. "We done seen plentah o' weird stuff alreddeh he' in Goldsborah. A li'l mo' weird stuff is only ta be expected at reg'lar intervals."
"I'm afraid you have to adhere to the curfew like everyone else, Wynne. If you of all people are caught breaking it, it'll be a sword hanging over my head," Mandy said quietly.
Wynne nodded somberly. "Yuh. Yuh, I'd hate mahself if that wus ta happen. I'mma-gonn' load up that there Nissahn real double-quick an' then me an' them dawggies gonn' head outta town in a dang-blasted hurreh. I be goin' south anyhows, so… once that there run is ovah, I be headin' home. Then I'mma-gonn' call mah boss Mista Trent an' tell 'im I ain't comin' back ta town until tamorrah mornin' or some such."
"Sounds like a plan, Wynne. Take care out there," Mandy said with a smile; she put a hand on Wynne's elbow and gave it a little squeeze for comfort.
"Haw! I sure will, De-per-ty Mandy… an' all y'all gotta watch yer asses now, ya hear?" Wynne said loud enough for the other deputies to hear. "Ain't no jokin' with'em fly boys… 'speshually not when they be goin' through he' coh-vert-leh. That's how them there conspee-racy theories start, ain't it? Yessirree! I be seein' yer fih-ne folks. Lawrdie, I bettah be gettin' mah buhhhtt outta he' befo' that there shit be hittin' the fan…"
"Bye, Wynne!" Rodolfo said with a grin; Don waved and Barry coughed, hacked and spluttered - nothing new there. As Wynne drove off in the white Nissan with the large heating box installed on the rear of the vehicle, Mandy's smile faded and turned into a frown. The night was still young, and there would be plenty of time for endless dramas to unfold before the first rays of light would illuminate the sky the following morning.
-*-*-*-
Ten past midnight, the mood among the deputies was a great deal less positive and upbeat than it had been earlier in the evening. Even the deepest well of excitement and enthusiasm would run dry if nothing happened that would require anyone's input, and that was the exact situation they found themselves in.
Snoring, tapping and gentle shuffling of papers dominated the soundscape. Now and then, the old building gave off various creaks and groans as the woodwork contracted after spending the day under the warm sun. The strip light that had been on the blink earlier had gone out completely like it couldn't be bothered to shine down upon the inattentive trio of deputies present at such an ungodly hour of the day.
The snoring was produced by Barry who had fallen asleep at the watch desk - for the first time all day, no foul-smelling smoke rose from his corner of the office. The shuffling of papers came from the smaller of the desks where Don was still hard at work trying to make sense of the clerical mess. Mandy was in charge of the tapping by repeatedly smacking the eraser-end of an innocent and defenseless pencil onto the desk top.
A crackle of static that came from the portable radio on the watch desk was the first hint that something was about to happen. The static was soon followed by a: 'Gonzalez to base. Gonzalez to base. We have some activity a few miles south of the town, over.'
Mandy jumped up from her own chair and strode over to the watch desk. Picking up the radio, she strode outside to get the view from their position halfway up Main Street. The sky was dark and quiet everywhere around her; with all the neon signs turned off for a change, she noted that she was able to see far more stars than usual.
She had already put the radio close to her mouth when she noted with some dismay that it was covered in leftover ash from Barry's cigarettes. Grumbling, she shook it off the radio so she could speak into it. "Gonzalez, this is Jalinski. Where are you and what can you see? Over."
'I'm at the transformer substation near the southern city limits sign. I have a clear view of the desert to the south. I can see and hear several helicopters and… uh, they're using search lights that shine down upon the State Route. I think the cones are marking the path of something that could be a large semi-truck, ov- hey, maybe Wynne was right! Maybe this is-'
"Less speculation and more facts, please, Deputy," Mandy said sternly. "Call in as soon as you have visual confirmation, over. And out."
After clipping the radio onto her belt to save it from another unhealthy dose of ash, she put her arms akimbo and stared up into the dark sky. The familiar sounds of flapping rotors soon drifted toward her on the leading edge of the wind - her experience told her at once they were Hueys.
Before the next phase could commence, Mandy strode back into the sheriff's office and went into the crew room at the back. She needed to rummage through two lockers before she found the items she was searching for: an unopened plastic bag containing a handful of brand new fluorescent vests that carried reflective striping across the front and back.
She tore open the bag at once and pulled the vests out. The letters S-H-E-R-I-F-F had been sewn onto the back in reflective block letters so nobody would mistake the wearers for being anyone else. They were supposedly of the one-size-fits-all variety, but she remained skeptical after the fiasco involving the new uniforms. Fluffing one out, she held it against her chest to check how it would fit - she was astounded when it didn't appear too bad.
"Don… catch," Mandy said as she strode past the smaller desk on her way back into the office. She tossed one of the vests at the temporary deputy without pausing to see if he did in fact catch it. "Barry, you'll need one of these… Barry. Barry! Deputy Simms, wake up.. it's showtime."
ZZZzzzzzz… "Whut?"
Mandy's lips turned into a narrow line in her face at seeing her deputy's hands trembling like leaves in a breeze. The lack of fresh nicotine in Barry's system gave him a bad case of the jitters that was only alleviated when he lit up and took a deep puff.
"Never mind," Mandy growled as she witnessed the gray, foul-smelling cloud of smoke rising to the abused ceiling. "Don… you're with me. Let's go."
"Right behind you, Deputy Jalinski," Don Woodward said as he snatched his Mountie hat off the nail on the wall. After he had put on the round hat, he slipped his arms through the gaps in the vest and used the Velcro tape on the front to close it.
Striding onto the sidewalk, Mandy put on her own fluorescent vest and looked up into the dark sky. While the sounds of the rotors had come closer, the aircraft were still outside of the city limits. She grunted and glanced up and down Main Street. The citizens of Goldsboro continued to respect the curfew, but she had a strong hunch that whenever the helicopters and the truck that Rodolfo had reported seeing would arrive, people's curiosity would win out and they would at the very least try to sneak a peek of the activity.
'Gonzalez to base. Gonzalez to base,' Rodolfo said over the radio from his spot down the other end of Main Street.
The transmission was accompanied by static so Mandy needed to twist the frequency knob to get it cleared up; then she pressed the transmit-key and said: "Go ahead, Deputy."
'I have a clear view now. In addition to the helicopters, there's a small convoy consisting of a semi-truck and three to four Humvees heading toward us. They're a mile out at present. The truck is growling along in low gear like it's pulling something heavy… they're only going twenty miles per hour at the most, over.'
"Roger that, Deputy. Stand by. Over."
'Standing by,' Rodolfo said before he fell quiet.
A series of rattling coughs heralded the arrival of Barry Simms. Wanting to do too many things at once, his efforts turned shaky - literally - as he tried to get the fluorescent vest's Velcro strip lined up and sealed while pinning down a portable radio under his chin and puffing hard on a cigarette lodged between his lips. He didn't realize he had forgotten to put on his Mountie hat in his haste to leave the sheriff's office before he reached up to make it sit better - when all he grabbed was hair, he groaned and began to shuffle back to the office.
Mandy sighed and rolled her eyes. "Come here, Barry," she said and took the radio from under her deputy's chin. Once she had slipped it into the appropriate slot on his utility belt, she turned to her older and more experienced colleague: "Don, please get Barry's hat. We don't have time for this nonsense."
"Yes, Ma'am," Don said and quickly retrieved the important uniform item. He grinned as he plonked it onto Barry's locks the wrong way around.
"Verrrrry funny, Don," Barry mumbled as he turned it around so it sat right.
To get back on track, Mandy keyed the transmit button on her radio: "Base to Deputy Gonzalez. How close is the convoy now, over?"
'Still more than half a mile out. They're moving forward at a steady pace. Oh! Oh, there goes one of the escort helicopters… it's headed toward you. Over.'
"I see it, Deputy," Mandy said and looked up at the familiar blinking lights that seemed to follow Main Street except that they were two-hundred feet in the air. "All right, get back here. The show's about to begin. We need everyone on crowd control. Over and out."
'Copy. Signing off,' Rodolfo said before the radio connection fell quiet. It didn't take long for his Dodge Durango's red-and-blue emergency lights to illuminate the dark Main Street while he raced back to the office.
As Mandy clipped the radio onto her belt, the helicopter blasted past overhead creating a wall of noise from the flapping rotors. "Gentlemen! Make sure that everyone stays inside and well away from this circus! The curfew is still in place! Arrest anyone refusing to leave! Get to it!" she roared to be heard over the metallic noises created by the helicopter.
Don and Barry shared a brief glance before they went to work. Mandy's barked commands wouldn't have sounded out of place coming from Sheriff Artie Rains - save for the fact he would have peppered his comments with expletives of all kinds. They were soon joined by Rodolfo Gonzalez who came to a screeching halt at the curb and jumped out of the Durango to help his fellow deputies.
---
Mandy remained at the sheriff's office so the Air Force liaison wouldn't have to search for her. Only a few moments went by before a command Humvee came to a halt outside the office; Lieutenant Colonel Pressley stepped out and offered Mandy a salute. "I see the curfew is being observed. Good work so far, Deputy. It won't take long to get the transport through." Unlike the traditional officer's uniform he had been wearing at the Town Council meeting, he was decked out in a battle dress carrying the familiar green-and-brown camouflage pattern.
"All right," Mandy said as she eyed the four heavily armed Humvees that escorted the olive-green eighteen-wheeler - she knew better than to ask what was in the full-sized container sitting on the flatbed trailer. Unlike regular cargo containers that typically only had doors at one end, this one had reinforced doors at both ends like it hauled something that couldn't move backwards.
The truck continued to drive in low gear, growling along Main Street at no more than fifteen miles per hour. The hectic activity and rumbling noises caused many lights to be turned on in windows all along the route just like Mandy had feared, but it seemed that the residents of Goldsboro adhered to the curfew for the time being.
While the Air Force officer maintained a constant radio contact with the pilot of the leading Huey, Mandy kept a close eye on the trailer. There was something odd about its angle, but she couldn't put a finger on what it was. Before she had time to alert the officer of her suspicions, the inevitable disaster happened.
From one moment to the next, two tires on the trailer's left-hand side blew out in a cloud of dust and a shower of sparks. As the trailer fell to its proverbial knees on that side, a metallic whine escaped from all corners of the container as it leaned heavily against the pegs holding it in place.
The weight of the leaning container eventually grew too strong for the trailer that had already been weakened by the punctures; it began to flex and then break apart. Once the pegs were unable to keep the container erect, it tilted to the side and fell onto Main Street with a violent bang that forced the rear doors open.
"Son of a-!" Mandy roared as she ran around the back of the wrecked trailer with the Air Force officer in tow, but her throat tied itself into a knot when she realized she was looking at a long, scaly - and above all very large - tail slapping left-to-right like the creature the tail was attached to was trying to break out. An otherworldly roar escaped from the container only a few seconds before the reinforced doors up at the front end were smashed open from the inside and a gigantic lizard-like creature ran out onto Main Street.
The quadruped creature was ten feet tall and its main body was at least thirty feet long. Including the powerful tail that continued to sweep left-to-right, it reached an impressive fifty feet in total length. The scaly head was massive with a dinosaur-like jaw and a pair of deep-black eyes that were protected by membranes; a knobby ridge ran from its brow and all the way down to the root of the tail.
It whipped its head around to see where it was at first, but soon settled down to let its forked tongue run along the side of the container to test it for its edibility. When it discovered it needed to look elsewhere for food, it spun around on its swift feet and let out a deafening hiss.
'Commence firing! Commence firing!' someone cried from somewhere on the street.
It took Mandy several seconds to realize the order to open fire had come from the Air Force officer whose calm exterior had fallen to pieces. When she noticed two squads of heavily armed soldiers disembarking from the Humvees with their assault rifles at the ready, she tried to intervene but never got anywhere before she was brushed off.
A split second later, all she could do was to hit the sidewalk as the air turned leaden - literally. As the projectiles hit the scales and the knobby ridge along the lizard-creature's spine, they ricocheted off the slanted surfaces and screamed out of control. Storefront windows and neon signs shattered everywhere which sent showers of shards into the stores and all over the street.
'What the hell's going on over there?!' Rodolfo's voice could be heard yelling from the radio, but Mandy had no time to respond. A moment later, another radio message was cut off by gross hacking and coughing - it could only have been Barry Simms.
The various Air Force officers connected to the convoy continued to bark orders at the soldiers who continued to fire at the creature - that it had zero effect didn't seem to come into play. All the constant firing succeeded in was to make the creature even angrier, and it spun around to let its powerful tail do the talking. Several soldiers took hard tumbles down the street as they were knocked off their feet; one of the Humvees was flipped over onto its side, and twenty feet of the front of Moira's Bar & Grill was soundly destroyed by the tip of the tail as the lizard-creature spun around once more.
"Cease fire! For crying out loud!" Mandy roared at the top of her lungs, but her plea fell on deaf ears. "Cease firing before you kill someone!"
When she found herself thoroughly ignored, she scrambled to her feet and stormed inside the sheriff's office. She had the gun cabinet open in no time and grabbed one of the special Mossberg double-barreled, ten-gauge shotguns they kept in case of needing to reign in rampaging bulls.
Storming back outside, she cocked both barrels and fired off two shells into the air - the violent, echoing boom got everyone's attention in a hurry. "Stop shooting! Stop shooting before you Goddamned morons ruin my town!" she roared in a voice that held more than a passing echo of former Sheriff Rains.
While Mandy reloaded the shotgun, Lieutenant Colonel Pressley ran over to her with his service pistol drawn. He began to roar at her though there were still thirty feet between them: "Deputy, you do not have authority over my men! We cannot allow this beast to escape!"
"The hell we can't!" Mandy barked at a similar volume, "I want that big thing outta here! Get it out into the open desert where it can't cause any damage to people or property!"
"That's not your decision to make, Deputy!"
Once the shotgun was ready, she ran out into the street to get a better view of the destruction caused by not only the creature but the ricochets as well - she growled out loud at the sorry mess. "You think you have control over that thing now?" Mandy yelled, pointing the barrels at the frantic lizard. "The hell you do, Pressley! Look at it, for crying out loud… what the hell is that thing, anyway?"
"That's need to know, and you don't!"
"Yeah, right…"
On the far side of Main Street, Rodolfo ran toward the chaos at high speed with his firearm drawn. Don Woodward followed in his wake but ran so much slower that he had fallen a hundred feet behind already; Barry Simms came last, and he dragged his feet so badly he nearly took several tumbles when he didn't lift them high enough to clear the edges of the flagstones. He eventually gave up the unequal struggle and put his hands on the wall of 'Friendly' Sam McCabe's gun shop to catch his breath that had gone missing somewhere up on Second Street.
The lizard-creature seemed to get spooked by the sudden appearance of the people in the eerily glowing vests, because it spun around to wreak a little more havoc with its tail. The meaty member was headed directly for Rodolfo, but the agile deputy performed an impressive sideways roll that saw him clear the danger at the last moment.
As the lizard spun around, its large head was suddenly aimed squarely at Mandy. Its forked tongue had already shot out of its mouth to test the edibility of the compact human in front of it when it realized she also wore one of the spooky vests. Shying back from the scary-looking living snack in a hurry, its natural head-for-the-hills-while-you-can reflex was activated which saw it spin around once more and take off running down Main Street.
"Stop it! Somebody stop it! We need to contain it!" Lieutenant Colonel Pressley barked. He took several pot shots at the escaping lizard with his sidearm but was unable to hit anything other than the air. The first of the Humvees soon made a U-turn on Main Street so the officer could climb aboard and engage in a chase. Unfortunately for all involved, the coordination of the squad's soldiers seemed to be lacking as the second of the drivable Humvees tried to mirror the U-turn and immediately smashed into the one Pressley had just boarded.
The sideways crunch broke off the right-front wheel and pushed the fender so far into the engine compartment that the hood flew open and blocked the driver's view of the street ahead of him.
While all that was going on, the lizard-creature's four feet moved so fast they were merely blurry lines in the air as it hustled down the street. When it reached the corner of the alley that ran between one of the storage halls and Grant Lafferty's Beer & Liquor Imports, it made a hard left and disappeared out of sight.
Angry shouting was the order of the day up at the sheriff's office as Lieutenant Colonel Pressley commandeered the last remaining Humvee and took off in a cloud of dust to catch the lizard. The heavily armed Air Force soldiers continued to run hither and yon like it would help, but all it did was to create even greater confusion.
The Hueys hovered above Main Street so they could survey the carnage by letting their powerful searchlights sweep across everything. The flapping rotors and the blinding lights only added to the mayhem down below, so it was a great relief to everyone when they took off in a hurry to follow the creature's tracks out of town and into the desert beyond it.
In the middle of all that dust, noise, shouting, swearing and excessive outpouring of testosterone, Mandy slapped her forehead and let out a sigh that came from the bottom of her soul. "There's a monster on the loose. Again. And who do we have on our side? The Keystone Kops. Wonderful. Goddammit!" She looked toward the heavens for guidance, but nothing came - not that she had expected any.
The citizens of Goldsboro made a rather predictable collective decision that they'd had enough of the strict curfew. Within moments, they swarmed onto Main Street to take in the latest monumental calamity to strike their peaceful little town. Moira MacKay in particular let her feelings be known to the world when she clapped eyes on the destroyed storefront of her bar and grill. Her voice reached a quality rarely heard outside of angle grinders as volcanic amounts of venom and vitriol spewed from her.
Mandy grumbled, growled and groaned out her frustrations at the mess, but before she could hail her deputies on the radio to get matters under control, she was swamped by fifteen or so citizens who all demanded answers at once. Luckily, she was soon joined by Rodolfo and Don Woodward who did their best to draw some of the flak away from their senior deputy.
Barry was still missing in action somewhere across the street, but he had at least made it as far as Holly Lorenzen's Homey Hair & Nails Salon. He had thrown himself onto one of the white park benches put up by the Town Council to give the rare tourists something to take pictures of. At present, the bench was home to a wheezing deputy sheriff whose hands shook so hard he could hardly keep his lighter straight beneath the tip of the inevitable cigarette. Once he had lit up, he took such a deep puff that nearly half of it was gone in one go.
-*-*-*-
Ten minutes later, Artie Rains' words about Mandy's rear-end occupying the hot seat echoed through her mind as a heaving mass of citizens crowded her. Two dozen questions that she hadn't been able to answer had been thrown at her; Moira's temper continued to explode at regular intervals like Yellowstone's Old Faithful geyser across the street, and the Air Force soldiers continued to run around aimlessly in spite of the presence of an officer who tried to keep matters calm.
Mandy's professional pride was under severe duress as all of the nonsense had happened on her watch. Although she couldn't be held accountable for any of it, it grated on her sense of duty that it had even taken place. Enough was enough, and she ultimately spun around and strode away from the mass of citizens to a chorus of outrage. The experienced Don Woodward took over and tried to smooth down the ruffled feathers, but he had as little success as his senior deputy.
"Rodolfo! I need you over here!" Mandy shouted as she waved her best deputy over to her. Once they were close enough to hear each other without shouting, they hurried out to stand in the center of Main Street to get a clearer view of the carnage. "First of all, where the hell is Barry?" Mandy said directly into Rodolfo's ear.
"He's dead in the water… he was almost blue in the face the last time I saw him."
"I'm telling you right now… when this is over, he's going to get an ultimatum. Shape up or ship out!" Mandy said and smacked her fist into her open palm. "Things are going to be different from now on! I will no longer tolerate the kind of behavior that he-"
Before she could go on, her personal telephone rang somewhere deep down a pocket. Grunting, she reached in past the fluorescent vest to retrieve it. "Oh, not now, Wynne…" she mumbled when she saw the caller-ID.
Rodolfo eyed her warily. Things would undoubtedly be different for them all if Mandy Jalinski was elected sheriff, that much was clear. He even agreed with her when it came to Barry Simms. Although Barry was a good-natured guy to be around, he was in reality a slacker who rarely - if ever - stood out in a positive way.
A soldier wearing a camouflaged battle dress uniform came out of the crowd and ran toward them; it made Mandy reject the call from Wynne and put the telephone away.
"Ma'am! Ma'am, I'm Lieutenant Calvin Terrell. I need a word at once!" the young, pale-skinned African-American officer said as he whipped his arm up into his customary salute.
"Just a second, Lieutenant," Mandy said and turned to Rodolfo. She put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him closer so she didn't have to shout. "Find Barry and see to it he pulls his weight. Put him on crowd control. The curfew is shot, but people are too angry to leave unattended. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Rodolfo said and hurried away to find his wheezing colleague.
Nodding, Mandy turned back to the Air Force officer. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."
"I have requisitioned new transport vehicles from the post as well as a dozer to get the street cleared, but it's going to be a while before they'll get here. The motor pool is closed for the night so the Sergeant in charge has to be roused first."
"Good. Thank you," Mandy said and let out a brief chuckle at the young man's description of events. "All right. I guess all we can do is wait. I'm sure your lieutenant colonel and his helicopters will find that thing… what was it, anyway?"
"I'm not at liberty to say, Ma'am. I need to return to my men," the lieutenant said before he performed another salute, spun around on his booted heel and marched back to the center of the action.
"Why did I even ask?" Mandy mumbled just as her telephone rang again. After digging for it, she furrowed her brow at the caller-ID that once again said Wynne. Since she had a rare moment to herself, she accepted the call and held the telephone to her ear. "Hi-"
'Lawwwwwwwwwwwwr-die, whaddindahell did all y'all folks up dere in Goldsborah do this tih-me? Holy mackerel, de-per-ty, Ah'm tellin' ya, we got us-selves one helluva big-ass problem down he'-'
"Wynne-"
'-an' Ah ain't kiddin', de-per-ty, it sure is one helluva big-ass problem! Yes, Ma'am! We got this he' giganto lizard-monstah runnin' around ragged like ya woudden bah-lieve an' them choppahs ovahhead be flappin' so dog-gone hard Ah can't hear mahself think or nuttin' an' them dawggies 'r goin' bonkahs 'cos of it an'-'
"Wynne, listen to me!" Mandy said as she put down the shotgun so she could stuff her free index finger into her ear in order to hear better. "You need to be very, very careful, you hear! That thing's tail is lethal!"
'Yuh! Yuh, we can dang sure alreddy attest ta that 'cos that there tail done smacked inta ol' Diego's wheelbarrow knockin' it inta a ball o' junk! Yuh-yuh, we be takin' care awright, y'all bettah bah-lieve we do!'
"Is it inside the trailer park right now, Wynne?"
'Naw! It wus he' jus' two minutes ago, but them there choppahs done scared it som'tin fierce an' it took off inta that there desuhrt like a buckin' bronc'ah! Lawrdie, Ah'm tellin' ya, that there big-ass thing almost gave mah shorts a brown streak an' Ah dropped mah beer on that there carpet in the livin' room an' Ah had only jus' opened it an'- aw, dad-gummit… dad-gummit! Them there choppahs be scarin' it a li'l mo' an' they be sendin' it right back at us, them dumb sombitches! Aw… aw! He' it comes! Awwwwww-hell! That there darn thing be comin' straight fer this he' trailah! Haw! Haw! Ooooooh!'
When the connection was suddenly lost, Mandy continued to stared wide-eyed at the blank telephone for several seconds. Then she grabbed the shotgun and took off in a wild sprint to get to the nearest of the Dodge Durangos. On her way there, she ran across the Air Force Lieutenant she had just spoken to. "Hey! We have a fix on where the beast is! A trailer park eight miles south! Redirect your people to meet us there! On the double!" she cried as she threw the powerful weapon onto the passenger-side seat, jumped behind the wheel and started the SUV. Without waiting for a reply, she turned on all the emergency lights and spun the steering wheel to the left.
"Uh… yes, Ma'am!" Lieutenant Terrell said before he had to perform a frantic leap to the side to avoid being run over by the Durango.
-*-*-*-
Meanwhile, back at the trailer park.
"Hooooooooooooooah-ly shittt!" Wynne cried as the huge lizard-creature changed direction a mere ten feet before it would have slammed head-first into the side of her trailer. The large, scaly animal jerked to the left at the last moment and dove into the space between the six trailers instead - the very tip of its tail did in fact strike the corner of the mobile home, but it only did minute damage to the outer wall.
Wynne had been standing in the kitchenette while she had kept up the running commentary, but she tore back into the living room to look out of the other window to see what the beast was doing. "De-per-ty Mandy!" she cried into the telephone without noticing that her cheekbone had accidentally tapped the display to terminate the call. "Lawwwwwr-die, that there crittah done took a hard left at tha foah-way intahsec-shun an' missed us! Dog-gone'it, it coudden ha' been no mo' than three feet or som'tin! This he' trailah done shimmy-shook a li'l so that there bee-hind might'a struck us or som'tin. Mercy Sakes, mah shorts be blessed tanight 'cos Ah nearly done added anothah o' them there brown streaks! But Ah didden!"
The neatly-groomed lawn was soon torn up by the fearsome claws on the quadruped's feet. Loose pebbles, tufts of grass and clumps of dirt flew everywhere for several seconds before the creature was spooked once more by the approaching helicopters and sprinted off in the other direction.
"Aw, ya hadda wreck our grass, ya big piece o'- Aw! Mandy, there goes that there Diego-fella an' he got that there thirty-odd-six o' his with'im! Lawrdie, I bettah keep a tight leash on them dawggies in case Diego be blastin' away at anythin' that moves… wait… wait, Ernie's comin'… he seems kinda agitated an' all! He wants ta par-lay with me so Ah gotta go, yuh? Mandy? De-per-ty?"
When Wynne lowered the telephone to look at the display, several deep furrows appeared across her forehead when she realized it had gone blank. "Whaddindahell… now what's wrong with that there dang-blasted thing? Aw, Ah ain't got tih-me ta worry 'bout that now," she said to herself as she shoved it into her pants pocket.
She hurriedly opened the window so she could wave at her friend. "Ernie! Ernie, Ah be in he'! Lawrdie, mind them pants o' yers… they sure ain't built fer that there kinda speed y'all be goin' at!"
Storming inside, Ernie was greeted by a cacophony of barks from the fearless Blackie and whimpers from the perennial scaredy-cat Goldie. He ignored them for the time being and hopped over their doggie-basket with surprising grace - the landing was slightly less graceful and he nearly slammed into Wynne who came the other way at the same moment. "Jesus H. Christ, Wynne! What is that thing? And what the hell's goin' on with those choppers?!"
"Yer askin' me? Howindahell should Ah know, Ernie?!"
"C'mon, we gotta get it away from here! We gotta stop it from takin' a dump on my porch like that gorilla-thing of yours!"
Wynne had already reached for her cowboy hat when she came to a dead stop and bared her teeth in a worried grimace. "Aw… aw, Ernie… mah deah friend… ya know Ah ain't too hot on them there big animal kinda deals… an' that nasteh crittah out there is one helluva big animal kinda deal… why, me an' Mandy watched a horrah mooh-vie jus' the othah week 'bout a whole buncha big, hairy things an' Ah wus hidin' bein' them there cushions the whole dang-blasted tih-me-"
"Not now, Wynne… I got Brenda and Diego with me. We're gonna shoo it away from here. Diego's gonna shoot into the air to scare it off… and Brenda says she knows a little Jiu-Jitsu in case it don't get the message the first time around!"
Wynne's eyes grew wide; then she narrowed them down into pale-blue slits. "Lawrdie, Ah ain't got no clue who dat dere John Jetson fella is or nuttin' but Ah sure as stink-on-shoot woudden wanna get anywheah neah that big-ass monstah! Didden ya clap yer eyes on that there tongue it's haulin' around? Why, that there nih-ce gal Brenda gotta be soft in the noggin or som'tin if she thinks-"
"Forget it, Wynne," Ernie said and stormed back out of the trailer leaving a stunned Wynne, an annoyed Blackie and a howling Goldie behind - two seconds later, Blackie had had enough of her owner's frustrating passiveness and hurried after Ernie Bradberry to join the fun.
"But… but… Blackie? Ernie? Aw… ev'rybodda be leavin' me…" Wynne said as she crouched down to rub Goldie's fur. "Lawrdie, Ah know why. 'Cos Ah'm a big chicken, that's why. Ah ain't sure Ah wanna be a big chicken, Goldie… 'cos them big chickens ain't cool. Big chickens don't got no friends ta share beers or stories or watch Nascahr or rasslin' or nuttin' with 'cos them othah folks know the big chicken only gonn' let 'em down an' smear them shorts o' hers when the goin' gets tuff an' all…" - Wynne fell quiet and glanced deeply into Goldie's round doggy-eyes for help.
The Golden Retriever had zero intention of ever joining any monster-fight if she could help it. Besides, she had been a big scaredy-cat - or at least the doggy-equivalent of that - her entire life so she couldn't really see Wynne's side of the story. She let it be known through a couple of yaps before she moved back to the basket.
Outside, Diego began firing his rifle in the air like Ernie had said he would. The lizard-creature responded by hissing loudly; soon, Ernie yelled that everyone should look out for the tail.
"Snakes Alive, I be lettin' mah friends down if Ah ain't gonn' help 'em fight that there big-ol', dang-blasted crittah… aw, Lawwwr-die… y'all bettah be lookin' out fer that there li'l ol' Wynne Donohue tanight is all Ah'm sayin'!"
Goldie produced a series of puzzled woofs and yaps that sounded very much like she was saying 'You can't be serious! Who's going to feed me if you get creamed?'
Wynne steeled her resolve, plonked her cowboy hat down onto her long, dark locks and stepped out into the night. All the action took part on the other side of the trailer, so she jumped off her crooked porch and hurried around the corner to help where she could.
She had barely made it around the corner and onto the central lawn before she was bowled over by the creature as it came rushing in the other direction. She only had time to utter a strangled "Hooooooooah-leh shittt!" before she found herself upside-down and nearly inside-out. She eventually landed in a heap at the foot of her own trailer none the worse for wear - her lucky streak when it came to the clean state of her shorts had even carried on through yet another monster-related incident of the uncool kind.
The only problem was she had lost her hat during the involuntary stunt. She tried to keep track of the beloved accessory as it twirled around in the air, but it soon went out of sight. A moment later, she could hear it land with a thud somewhere out there in the darkness. "Yuh. It hadda happen… dog-gone'it, it hadda happen…" she mumbled as she fumbled around to find her bearings.
Ernie soon hurried over to his friend to check up on her and help her get back upright. "Man, Wynne! When ya wreck, ya sure go all the way… that thing gave ya a real Martinsville-style hip check! Ya ended up upside down and backwards into the fence! Are ya all right?"
"Yuh… yuh, Ah'm fih-ne… an' mah shorts sure is, too!"
Ernie did a double-take at the news but didn't have time to make a comment as Diego and Brenda ran over to the duo to see what was happening. Wynne grimaced at the unwanted attention from her neighbors, but it only lasted for a short while as the fearless monster hunters were soon on the move once more.
The lizard-creature kicked up a storm of dust, smaller pebbles and larger pieces of rock as it zig-zagged through a section of the desert not too far from the trailers. The chase was literally on to get it to move a bit further away, and Diego continued firing in the air to spook the beast into running.
Blackie came to a halt at the boots of her owner with the beloved cowboy hat safely between her teeth. Letting it go at Wynne's feet, her pink tongue was extended as she panted heavily from all the fun she'd had. A few barks followed like she was urging Wynne to join the action while the going was good.
"Yuh… yuh, Blackie, ya crazy dawggie… Ah be right behindcha… or som'tin," Wynne said as she grabbed the hat and plonked it onto her dark locks once more. Although she let out a few groans from the inevitable aches that shot up from various body parts, she took off in a jog - Blackie woof'ed loudly and ran alongside the pair of neatly decorated cowboy boots in the hope they'd soon rejoin the fray.
-*-*-*-
Exactly four minutes and forty-seven seconds later, Mandy made the top-heavy Dodge Durango go into a dangerous tilt as she spun the steering wheel around to get off the State Route and onto the narrow road that led to the trailer park. The emergency lights atop the SUV lit up everything and made it appear like a Lynyrd Skynyrd rock concert from the band's heyday in the 1970s.
The large vehicle had barely come to a gravel-scraping halt next to their rented Silverado and the Chicky Kingz Nissan delivery truck before she bounded from it and tore across the lawn between the trailers. The state of the grass proved that the beast had been there, but at least there weren't any body parts scattered around that she could see. Gunfire a short distance away into the desert made her draw her service pistol and head off in that direction.
As she flew around the corner of the trailer she shared with Wynne and the dogs, she noticed the screen door was flapping in the breeze. Although she could still hear shouting and further gunfire from beyond the trailer park itself, she decided to do a quick search of the trailer in case anyone needed medical attention. "Hello?" she cried as she jumped up onto the crooked porch and proceeded into the kitchenette. "Hello? Is anyone here? Wynne?"
A few whimpers from the bedroom proved that Goldie had withdrawn to her favorite hiding place, namely under the bed. Mandy let out a strangled chuckle as she crouched down to look under the wooden frame. The Golden Retriever had rolled herself up into a ball of golden fur like she always did whenever monsters or any other kind of dangers were near.
The trailer seemed deserted beyond Goldie's presence, but Mandy performed a fast sweep of all the rooms just to be on the safe side. The only thing out of place was a large beer stain and a pile of crushed Nacho Cheese Doritos on the carpet in the living area. A video tape of an old pro-wrestling event ran on the TV almost like Wynne had been blindsided by the arrival of the beast. To save a few cents on their electricity bill, Mandy turned off the VCR and the TV since no one was there to see the show.
It soon became obvious that Wynne and Blackie had to be out in the desert where the shouting and firing took place, so Mandy ran out of the trailer and onto the open ground behind it. Loud hissing and a constant swooshing of the long, powerful tail proved the creature was still active. Now and then, the dark night was lit up by muzzle flashes from a firearm that she quickly identified as being Diego's hunting rifle.
She cursed inwardly when she realized she had forgotten to take either of their flashlights with her; the path through the desert was dark and rutty, but she and the dogs had been through there often enough to know the way - roughly. A crackle of static from her portable radio made her holster her pistol and reach for the other utility instead.
'Lieutenant Terrell for Deputy Jalinski… Lieutenant Terrell for Deputy Jalinski… are you on this frequency, over?'
"Affirmative, Lieutenant," Mandy said after she had pressed the transmit key. "I've located the beast at the trailer park I told you about. What's the status of our support units, over?"
'Uh… they're still en route, Deputy. The site has been logged on the GPS so they know where to go. Do you have a visual contact with Lieutenant Colonel Pressley or his transport, over?'
Mandy did a three-sixty turn to study the horizon in every direction; there weren't any headlights anywhere that she could see. "That's a negatory. There's nothing in sight out here, over."
'We cannot hail him on the radio. Perhaps they're bogged down somewhere out of range… over.'
A bitter chuckle escaped Mandy's throat concerning the professionalism of the lieutenant colonel. She was about to inform Lieutenant Terrell of her feelings on the matter when she realized it would be out of line. "All I know is that he and the Humvee aren't here at present. We don't have the manpower to search for him at present. He'll have to wait for your own people to catch up. Can't your Hueys sweep the desert, over?"
'They had to return to the post to refuel. It'll be at least forty minutes before they can resume their active recon. Over.'
While she and the Air Force officer had spoken, Mandy had moved closer to the center of the action. She could hear Blackie's easily recognizable barking somewhere ahead; the German Shepherd sounded like she was in a good mood rather than feeling threatened. "Copy that, Lieutenant. I need to concentrate on the task at hand. Jalinski out," Mandy said and clipped the radio onto her belt. She drew her firearm once more and continued forward.
---
Seventy yards further ahead, a great sigh of relief escaped Mandy as she spotted Wynne stepping into view from behind a large slab of rock. The tall, denim-clad woman took off her cowboy hat to wipe her brow on her jacket sleeve, but that seemed to be her only ailment. Mandy was about to take a deep breath to cry out Wynne's name when she noticed the outline of a vast shape resting atop the slab of rock - suddenly, the far end of the shape moved revealing that it was in fact the lizard-creature.
After coming to an abrupt halt for a second or two, Mandy took off in a sprint to close the distance as quickly as she could before another calamity of gigantic proportions could claim them.
---
The rapid approach of the compact, athletic frame startled Wynne to such a degree that she nearly took a tumble over Blackie. Spinning around to face what might be an even scarier critter than the scaly beast behind her, she was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't a critter at all. "Lawwwwwwwwwwwwr-die! If it ain't mah sweet, li'l de-per-ty!" she cried and put out her arms to be ready for the crushing hug she was sure would follow.
It was only when Ernie, Diego, Brenda and Blackie told her to pipe down in a selection of somewhat crude and occasionally impolite words - and barks - that she realized she had better turn it down to half-volume or so. "Mandy! I be ovah he'!" she said in a loud stage-whisper.
A moment later, the crushing hug she had hoped for was delivered in spades. As they hugged, she saw her chance to steal a little kiss as well. "Lookie he', de-per-ty. Ain't this som'tin?" she said as she turned around and made a sweeping gesture at the oddly passive creature. "Mercy Sakes, it wus Miss Brainiac Brendah Travahs ovah there who done figgered out them lizards wus cold-blooded crittahs or some such so all this he' fella wus lookin' fer wus a warm bed fer the night! An' he found it on that there rock! Haw, ya know what that there rock is, De-per-ty? It's a bedrock! Bedrock, get it?"
"Wynne-"
"Yessirree, that there hawt sun done baked it all day so it's gotta be nice an' warm an' all. Like that there ol' hot-watah bottle we use fer them there chilly nights so our li'l twinkletoes don't turn inta' buncha eye-cickels or nuttin'! Ain't that funneh?"
"I suppose," Mandy said and scratched her neck while she looked at the beast and her neighbors who stood in a semi-circle around it to keep it under watch. "Good evening, Mr. Bradberry… Mr. Benitez… Mrs. Travers… I don't think the citizens of Goldsboro will think it's particular funny, though. The town's a big mess."
"Aw… not ag'in…"
"I'm afraid so, Wynne. Moira's bar and grill was hit hard."
"Lawrdie…" Wynne said and pushed her cowboy hat back from her brow so she had room to wipe her brow again. "Naw, that sure ain't funneh, nosirree."
Mandy shook her head; she slipped out of Wynne's grip and moved closer to the big beast. She didn't want to get too close to the tail after seeing what kind of damage it could inflict so she kept at a safe distance. Feeling a need to learn a little more about their latest opponent, she walked the entire length of the creature while keeping it under strict surveillance.
It just lay there on the warm rock breathing evenly. The massive jaw was closed but the eyes were still visible since it had no eyelids as such - the membranes that protected the eyeballs were transparent. The sand-and-black camouflage patterns on its skin were perfect to make it disappear into its surroundings; if it hadn't been for its extraordinary size, it would have been possible to walk straight past it without noticing anything.
Grunting, Mandy moved back to Wynne. While she had studied the creature, Ernie Bradberry had come over to join them: "What the hell is this thing, anyway?" he said, pointing his thumb at the lizard.
"I done tole ya them Air Force boys wus playin' with them crittahs from outah space or som'tin… ev'rybodda knows that…" Wynne mumbled.
Chuckling at her partner's comments, Mandy moved over to the denim-clad woman to shoot her a smile and put a calming hand on her elbow. "It might be, Wynne. Or it might not. Your guesses are as good as mine," she said as she turned back to Ernie. "The Air Force told me it was need-to-know. It looks like an oversized Gila Monster, but-"
Wynne butted in: "That's Gee-lah, de-per-ty," she said and broke out in a snicker. Blackie looked up at her owner and let out a puzzled Wooooof? that seemed to say 'I'm not too sure about that, actually…'
Ernie and Mandy shared a brief look, but they were spared needing to correct Wynne when Diego Benitez came over to the group. "No, it's a Native American word, Wynne. It's pronounced Hee-la," he said with a smile. The dark complexion of his facial skin was only interrupted by the chilling, white scar that was the lasting evidence of the gunshot accident that had nearly done him in during the Goblin invasion on a past Halloween.
Diego wore a nice set of sand-colored flannel pajamas and matching slippers since he had already gone to bed when Ernie had hollered for him - the casual look clashed with the cold steel of the thirty-odd-six rifle he carried on a strap over his shoulder.
"Haw, nevah mind… but it sure is a monstah, awright," Wynne mumbled as she looked down at her boots. A distant rumbling of several engines saved her from further embarrassment. Blackie sensed that her owner's mood had gone south, so she shuffled over to rub herself against one of the denim-clad legs to cheer her up.
"That'll be the Air Force… I hope," Mandy said as she moved away from the group to get a better view of the desert behind them.
To give his morose friend a boost, Ernie slapped Wynne's shoulder. "Who cares what it's called as long as it didn't crap on any of our porches. You did great tonight, Wynne. Tell ya what… most of us are here, anyhow, so wouldn't this be a great opportunity to down a couple-a beers and maybe rig up a late-late-night barbecue or somethin'? Diego?"
"You got it, man! I just need to slip into something less comfortable!" Diego said with a grin.
Wynne shrugged. "Ah done spilled the last beer Ah tried ta drink. Ah had only jus' opened it when that there big-ass crittah came a-runnin'. An' then Ah put mah foot up mah own bee-hind with that there hee-la thing an' all," she said in a constant stream of mumbling. "Mebbe Ah ain't gonn' be no fih-ne comp'ny tanight-"
"That's a deal, then," Ernie said and slapped Wynne's shoulder again. "I got the beer and the buns, Diego's got the tequila and the beef patties… right?" - Diego nodded while sporting an even wider grin - "Excellent… Brenda and Vaughn's got the Weber… and Wynne, you and Blackie got the happy vibe goin', dontcha?"
"Yuh. I sappose…"
"If that ain't a match made in heaven, I don't know what is," Ernie said, grinning so broadly the corners of his bushy walrus mustache needed to stretch out to make room for the smile.
-*-*-*-
The distance from thought to action was never far among the residents of the trailer park so it took them less than fifteen minutes to get everything set up in spite of the lateness of the hour: Ernie brought burger buns, several jugs of his special hot sauce and two buckets of Fenwycks from his beer pit in his back garden. Diego brought a bottle of tequila, a cooler box full of prime beef patties and even a fiery Mexican sausage that he dared any of the paler-skinned people to try.
Brenda and Vaughn Travers were in charge of the barbecue itself; after cozy-fying a section of the desert with a few camping lights and blankets, Brenda turned to heating the beads and handling the skewers and various other tools with aplomb. Vaughn settled for watching his energetic, go-getter wife work while he sipped a light beer - he had brought his own cans with him because his sensitive stomach couldn't handle the richer products from H.E. Fenwyck. The Tooleys had declined to join the improvised party for work-related reasons, so everyone tried to keep it civil so Estelle and Frank wouldn't be disturbed.
Everyone was in high spirits save for Wynne. Practicing her thousand-mile stare, she sat cross-legged on a blanket just outside the square of light produced by the four camping lights.
Goldie had joined the group after the worst of the danger had been dealt with. Like Blackie had done earlier, the Golden Retriever had sensed that her owner was in a severe funk - in order to rectify it, she had simply climbed up onto Wynne's lap and filled it out completely.
Wynne did in fact run her long fingers through Goldie's fur, but it was a half-hearted gesture. Now and then, she reached for a can of H.E. Fenwyck's 1910 Special Brew that she drank at a far slower rate than normal.
---
On the far side of the makeshift party zone, Mandy stood with her hands firmly ensconced on her hips as she watched a group of Air Force Engineers try to prod the sluggish beast into relocating to a new container so they could get back on schedule. She had wanted to add her two cents' worth at first but had soon discovered the soldiers were quite capable of messing up on their own. The team of struggling, sweating and swearing Engineers grew more frustrated by the second, and she suspected it wouldn't be long before they would break out the dynamite to get the lizard off the warm rock and into the cold container.
Lieutenant Calvin Terrell ran himself ragged trying to be everywhere at once. Being the highest ranking officer present, he not only had to keep an eye on the beast itself and the hardworking Engineers, but give orders to the truck driver, the helicopter pilots high above and even the sentries on loan from the Watch Regiment who controlled the perimeter so nobody would catch a glimpse of the large reptile.
One of the heavily armed, camouflaged sentries came hurrying back to add another layer to Terrell's problems: "Lieutenant!" the soldier said as he jumped into a hard salute, "Reporting a visual contact with a foreign ground object seven hundred yards to the west-north-west. It's traveling in this direction and closing fast. The FFI can't get a fix on its transponder, but there's a possibility it's the Lieutenant Colonel returning, Sir."
In a flash, Lieutenant Terrell's face turned even more haggard than it had been up until then. He groaned and looked around for someone who could deal with the latest crisis - when his eyes fell on Mandy, he waved her over to him. "Deputy Jalinski, uh… would you mind, uh…"
"I'm on it, Lieutenant," Mandy said in a steely voice before she turned to the sentry. "Let's go."
---
The camouflaged sentries all did a double-take when they were joined by a woman who was a foot shorter - and narrower - than most of them. The look of steely determination on her face proved she was the real deal, however, so they soon returned to their task of protecting the perimeter.
Mandy was given a set of binoculars that were equipped with an advanced night scope. Holding the binoculars up to her eyes, she needed a moment to get on top of the small but important differences between the military-issue and Wynne's older model that she had used several times. An F.F.I. symbol flashing on-and-off in the lower left quarter of the display needed an explanation, so she turned to the sentry who had brought her over there. "What's that? The FFI symbol?"
"That's the intelligent Friend or Foe Identification system, Ma'am."
"And that means?"
"That the software can tell the difference between our own vehicles and those used by an opponent or enemy. And non-combatant vehicles as well, of course. Civilians."
"I see. So when it's flashing…?"
"It means the software has yet to identify it, Ma'am. The outline resembles a Humvee so we believe it's Lieutenant Colonel Pressley."
"All right," Mandy said and put the advanced binoculars back up to her eyes. It didn't take her long before she acquired the so-called foreign ground object in the middle distance. "I believe you're correct. Its headlights are out. Looks like the rear tarp's been shredded and the windshield's been smashed. They've probably spent the last hour in a ditch or a gully somewhere. Do you have a flashlight so we can signal him?"
"We're not allowed to reveal our position, Ma'am."
"Very well. It's better to have your lieutenant colonel drive straight past us. I'm sure that'll improve his disposition," Mandy said with her tongue pressed only slightly into her cheek.
"Ah… good point," the sentry said and began to search for a flashlight. Once he had it, he sent a Morse code signal to the driver of the suspected Humvee that only military personnel would recognize.
It didn't take long for the battered vehicle to find its way over to the forward position and come to a dust-flying halt. When a horrendously filthy Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Pressley stepped out to salute the sentries, Mandy could barely hide a rare smirk. Pressley and Terrell soon began speaking in a long-winded fashion using scores of the acronyms and various other abbreviations that military personnel are so fond of, and that was Mandy's cue to move over to the party zone instead.
---
Wynne continued to sit by herself while the others all huddled up so they didn't have to shout to be heard over the nearby racket. Brenda had performed wonders on Diego's burgers at the Weber Grill, and Ernie's tasty hot sauce elevated the whole thing onto a heavenly level. Diego's fiery Mexican sausage had been too much for all but Ernie who had plenty of experience with triple-strength chilis after years' worth of tasting experimental hot sauces. Blackie and Goldie had been treated to a pair of cold, pre-cooked frankfurters that they were devouring in typical style.
A smile broke out on Wynne's lips when she felt Mandy's surprisingly soft touch caressing her neck. Looking up, she locked eyes with her partner to invite her to sit close to her instead of going over to the others. Mandy had planned to do that regardless, so she sat down on the blanket closest to Wynne. It wasn't long before Ernie handed her a soft drink and a cardboard tray featuring a napkin and a fresh burger that had been coated with a healthy amount of his home-made mild chili sauce. "How come you're sitting over here? It can't be because you mispronounced that difficult word. We've all done that," Mandy said quietly in case something had happened during the initial chase that she wasn't aware of.
"Naw, ain't got nuttin' ta do with that. Ah wus jus'… it wussen…" Wynne said before she stopped. After letting out a long, deep sigh, she continued: "When them brave folks ovah yondah wus tryin' ta wrangle in that there crittah, Ah wus jus' runnin' around freakin' out like a big scaredy-chicken. Dad-gummit, even Blackie he' wus bravah than Ah wus. Didden do nuttin' good fer mah self-esteem, lemme tell ya. It wussen that Ah didden try… Lawrdie, Ah tried, but Ah jus' coudden get a grip on mahself fer long enough ta ack-chew-leh help Ernie an' them folks. An' then when that there ol' beast fih-nalleh done found a slab o' rock ta rest on, Ah hadda siddown with mah back turned ta it or else Ah woudden ha' been able ta even be out he'. Ain't nuttin' Ah can do 'bout it. Ah jus' ain't good with them large animals… but Ah reckon Ah let Ernie an' them fih-ne folks down."
"Do they?" Mandy said and took a big bite out of her fresh burger.
Wynne furrowed her brow. "Do they whut?"
"Think you let them down?"
"Dunno," Wynne said and toyed with a loose pebble down by her boots. "Ah ain't askin' an' they ain't tellin'."
After Mandy had finished her burger, she wiped her fingers on the napkin and cracked open the can of Diet Coke. The desert dust and all the excitement in town had left her as dried-up as the riverbed that ran at the bottom of Maynard Canyon, so she emptied half the can in a series of deep gulps. "Well… why don't you move over to where the others are and find out?" she said, eyeing Ernie Bradberry who was sharing a joke with the others.
Wynne's eyes went on a small tour of the faces of the people present, starting with Mandy's soft features and ending at Ernie's rather more rugged exterior. When she and her old friend locked eyes, he grabbed a can of Double Zero from the bucket and pointed at it like he had been saving it for her. Wynne looked back at Mandy at once and promptly broke out in a sigh of relief.
"Y'all be the smartest woman Ah evah met, de-per-ty… Lawrdie, Ah woudden know what ta do without'cha," she mumbled and unfolded her legs from the cross-legged position. Mandy's lips were too good to ignore, so Wynne dove down and stole a big, ol' kiss right then and there as a thank you.
Getting up from the blanket, Wynne soon crossed over to their friendly neighbors and sat down all over again - the can of Double Zero exchanged hands before it ended its days being poured down her gullet. Before long, the old, jovial Wynne had returned from the Land Of Funk and was busy swapping jokes with the other fine folks of the trailer park.
Mandy just smiled; the smile grew wider when Blackie and Goldie came over to her to get a little fur-rubbing and to congratulate her on a successful soul-supporting session. Though the closeness of their dogs soothed her, a knot of worry slowly began to develop in her gut when she thought of the bitter words that had been thrown at her from the residents of Goldsboro - the very same residents she had to rely on for votes in the upcoming election. The latest calamity to strike the desert town couldn't have come at a worse moment.
Duty called and she replied to it by emptying the Diet Coke, getting back to her feet and dusting off the seat of her uniform pants. Mandy Jalinski was once more the senior deputy and acting sheriff of Goldsboro, Nevada. There were reports to be written, complaints to be listened to and literally dozens of buckets of glass shards to be swept up and thrown away. The next few days would be hectic, there was little doubt about that.
-*-*-*-
The Air Force Engineers finally managed to prod the sluggish lizard-beast into the replacement container and seal the doors after struggling for more than an hour and a half to get everything lined up.
All that remained was to have the large, noisy tracked mobile crane that had been brought up from the Air Force Base lift the container off the ground and carry it over to the truck and low-rider trailer that waited for it just beyond the edge of the desert. Despite the rock-hard appearance of the desert floor, it was too soft for anything but four-wheel-drives or tracked vehicles, a fact that was underscored by the deep ruts the heavy crane left behind as it drove across the sand and rocks while letting out plumes of black diesel-smoke.
The moment the mobile crane set off at a staggering two miles per hour - so it could keep the container from swaying too wildly - Mandy met up with Lieutenant Terrell and Lieutenant Colonel Pressley who were both flustered, sweaty and filthy from the work and the time spent in the desert.
"Gentlemen. Your Engineers have done an excellent job," Mandy said as she kept a close eye on the progress of the mobile crane in case their legendary rotten luck would strike again.
"Ma'am," Lieutenant Terrell said and performed a regulatory salute. "Yes, they have indeed. The new container should be stronger than the old one."
Lieutenant Colonel Pressley had no time for saluting. Instead, he checked his wristwatch; the grouchy look he had on his poster-boy face proved he had lost his sense of humor while he had been stuck somewhere out in the desert. Grumbling, he wiped his brow on a dusty handkerchief. "We're so far behind schedule we'll most likely need to seek alternative routes. Lieutenant, I want you to draw up a contingency plan. Use back roads and the like. Call ahead to-"
When Pressley realized they had a civilian, albeit a law enforcement officer, within earshot, he changed his approach: "Call our destination and inform them of the delay. Tell them we'll be there as soon as possible."
"Yes, Sir," the lieutenant said before he saluted his superior, spun around on his combat boots and marched into the night to carry out the order.
Mandy knew better than to ask any questions even if they were burning on the tip of her tongue. From studying the lizard-beast, she suspected it was just an upscaled version of the common desert dwellers rather than a visitor from afar, but the questions of how it had become that large and why anyone would ever want to make it so remained nebulous.
She eventually filed her unspoken lines of thought under U for Usual, Unusual Stuff, The where it ended up next to the space aliens that resembled Q-Tips, Reverend Raymond Light's horde of zombie cannibals, the goblins that Wynne had accidentally unleashed after finding the Devil Box in the ghost town at Silver Creek and even the dimension-breaking crimson thunderstorms that had tormented the much-plagued citizens of Goldsboro.
The lieutenant colonel put his hands behind his back as he glanced at the compact woman in front of him. In the background, the tracked mobile crane continued to rumble along and spew out massive clouds of black diesel-smoke that slowly dissolved as they rolled over the desert terrain. "Ah… Deputy Jalinski," he finally said while keeping his eyes on the tracked mobile crane like he wasn't sure how the senior deputy would react to his words, "I don't know how to ask this without having it sound, ah… odd… but do you know if there are any other large creatures on the loose in the desert?"
An image of the forty-foot humanoid creature that Wynne had dubbed the 'nekkid garillah' immediately flashed through Mandy's mind - it had caused plenty of trouble around the trailer park and even Goldsboro itself when it had taken a large bite out of one of the metal power pylons that criss-crossed the desert. Later on, it had mistaken Ernie Bradberry's porch for a public restroom which could even be considered a worse offense as the smell continued to linger whenever the temperature grew too high during the summer months. A concerted effort from Mandy, Wynne, Blackie and Goldie had been needed to scare the creature away from the trailer park and back into the desert where it had come from.
Mandy cocked her head while she tried to compose an answer that was believable without being exactly truthful - the forty-foot beast had yet to be discovered by the public at large, and she didn't want to see it hunted down by the military if she could help it. "Well, we've had reports of large creatures running around out here, yes, but not for a while. We consider them old wives' tales, frankly."
"Oh… well…"
"It's like the UFO sightings," Mandy said to move onto a topic that she knew the lieutenant colonel would understand considering his involvement in what was undoubtedly a Special Projects department of the Air Force. "Whenever they're highlighted by the media, public interest picks up. It lasts for a couple of days and then it dies down again. But while it's there, we're contacted by fifty people or more who claim to have seen something. It leads to heaps of reports that we can just throw out afterwards."
"Ah… I see. Well, it was just a shadow that appeared on the crest of the nearest ridge. And there was perhaps some heavy breathing as well," Pressley said in a voice that held a slightly embarrassed tinge.
Mandy maintained a perfectly calm expression even though she knew - from personal experience - that heavy breathing was in fact proof the humanoid beast had been near the lieutenant colonel and his men. She had heard the creature's characteristic breathing twice during the original incident: first when she had been called out to a road accident on a desolate stretch of the State Route; then, several hours later, during the closing chase through the dark desert.
Clearing his throat, Lieutenant Colonel Pressley was soon back to a full military posture. "But that's irrelevant now. My driver had managed to find the deepest ravine out there… save for Maynard Canyon itself, obviously. The Humvee rolled fully over. We spent an hour and ten minutes shoveling sand and dirt away to get it back on an even keel. Fortunately, the four-wheel-drive could do the rest."
Mandy nodded. "Been there, done that. No fun."
The noisy, smokey mobile crane had finally reached the truck pulling the low-rider trailer. While Lieutenant Terrell worked hard to coordinate the actual lowering of the container onto the trailer to get the four pegs to line up with the corresponding holes in the underside of the metal box, Pressley turned back to Mandy - this time, he did jump into a salute. "It appears we'll soon be ready to carry on. There's no need to add to the civic unrest in Goldsboro so we'll circumvent the town and find an alternative route. It's been fascinating, Deputy Jalinski."
"It certainly has, Lieutenant Colonel Pressley," Mandy said and briefly saluted the Air Force officer before she put out her hand for the traditional civilian greeting.
-*-*-*-
Just over half an hour later, Mandy parked the Dodge Durango at the curb in front of the sheriff's office. Her face was set in stone as she took a long, gloomy look at the destruction on Main Street.
Rounding up the lizard-creature and getting it back underway had taken so long there were only a handful of hours left of the night. She realized with a sinking feeling that she might not get a chance to go home before the first people would show up at the office with their wholly justifiable complaints. If she wanted to sleep at all, she would have to do so on a makeshift bunk in the crew room - and that wasn't a particularly enthralling prospect.
A short distance further down Main Street, another team of Air Force Engineers worked flat-out to remove the wrecked trailer and the twisted remains of the original container so all evidence of the fiasco would be gone come dawn.
Most of the residents had retired to their homes but there were pockets of agitation here and there. The deputies were easy to spot by their fluorescent vests, and it seemed they had split up to control a group of angry citizens each. Rodolfo Gonzalez and Don Woodward were on top of things as expected, but Barry Simms had a hard time stamping his authority on the agitated people in his group.
It was obvious he needed help, so Mandy exited the Durango and strode across Main Street to come to her deputy's assistance. Barry and the people he was trying to calm down were standing in front of 'Friendly' Sam McCabe's gun shop, and that was most likely the reason for the high number of rifles and shotguns that were brandished by them.
Barry let out a sigh of relief when he was joined by the senior deputy, but his contentment at being backed up by his superior was short-lived. He squirmed hard when he caught a glimpse on the dark look on Mandy's face that was aimed at him rather than at the unruly crowd - he realized he would soon be at the receiving end of a lecture he wouldn't forget in a hurry.
"The show's over. You can all go home now," Mandy said loudly once she reached the agitated individuals. "The mess will be much easier to sweep up in the morning," she continued in a voice that was non-aggressive but authoritative.
'Deputy, who the hell's gonna pay for all this? We sure ain't!' somebody said from within the group.
"I'm quite sure the Town Council will contact the Air Force and ask for due compensation."
'Ha! Fat chance of that!'
"It is nevertheless what will happen," Mandy continued as she made sure to look each and everyone of the agitated people in the eye. "Tomorrow. You might as well go home and get a good night's sleep because there's no more to be done tonight."
The calming message seemed to get through to the people there since all but the angriest among the crowd began to disperse. It didn't last long before the final hold-outs shuffled off as well with all their hunting rifles and shotguns.
Mandy and Barry remained standing at the gun shop's storefront windows for a few minutes to see if anyone changed their mind, but it seemed that common sense had prevailed for a change. The Air Force Engineers continued to create a racket in the background, but even they were finishing up.
The silence between the law enforcement officers soon turned awkward, and Barry cringed, squirmed and shuffled around on the spot like he was trying to stay warm - he was in fact beet-root red in the face as he puffed on the latest of his home-rolled cigarettes.
"Deputy Simms," Mandy eventually said when it became clear the worst of the anger had died down among the citizens, "I need to freshen up once we get back to the office. That'll give you five minutes to write a self-evaluation of your efforts tonight. We'll go through it step by step. In the crew room. Behind closed doors. Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal clear, Ma'am…" Barry said in a somber voice. A cloud of foul-smelling smoke escaped his mouth as he spoke; he suddenly realized his smoking habits could potentially be at the root of his poor stamina, so he made a big show out of stubbing out the cigarette on the sidewalk. He smiled at the tough senior deputy in the hope it would appease her, but it didn't - she simply spun around and stomped off toward the sheriff's office.
He stared at the unlit cigarette in his hand. Not wanting to waste it, he immediately reached into his breast pocket for a book of matches so he could keep puffing while he shuffled back to the office.
The spent match was soon thrown onto the street where it joined the regular litter as well as some poor Air Force soldier's long-forgotten field cap that had fallen off during the melee, scores of empty brass casings from the rounds that had been fired, and finally thousands of shards of glass - the quiet desert town of Goldsboro, Nevada, had once again lived up to its reputation of being the world's center for chaos, confusion and colossal calamities…
*
*
THE END