Chupacabra: A Novella
gazed back at her, female to female. If there would be no attack, then it would follow its first inclination and course of action. The human before her was in estrous, and could bear other humans to hunt its kind. The Chupacabra pivoted on one heavily muscled leg and made as if to bound with a spread of its membranous wings, in the direction of the wide-eyed radio astronomer. Before it had a chance to spring from its coiled position, Jacobs regained his composure, took aim and hit the creature in the stomach with a ketamine dart. There was enough anaesthetic in there to bring down a large dog almost instantaneously, but Roth suddenly realized he had no idea how much it would take to bring down an otherworldly creature like this abomination, standing not ten feet before him.
The Goatsucker looked down at the dart, then unblinking at the sheriff. In the light of day, its eyes had returned to inky black. There were now only residual tinges of red at reflected angles along the teardrop shape of their curved surfaces. As if the corners of the slit of its mouth turned up in a mockery of a smile, the dots of its nostrils flaring imperceptibly wider as it took in his scent as the dominant male, the creature pulled the tip of the expelled dart from its flattened stomach.
It pivoted its triangular head now in the direction of the deputy and slithered out the proboscis, sampling the air about the half-Cajun. Then it turned its whole body in the selection of a new victim.
Roth Jacobs.
"Screw this!” Jacobs shouted as the creature hunched down and raised its claws to spread its wings for a sudden leap. He grabbed the over and under shotgun from David Klein and dropped to the floor in one motion as the Chupacabra filled the air above him. It shrieked and hissed as it leaped to tear into him with its razor sharp claws. He pulled the trigger and put both barrels into the taut midsection of the beast, throwing it back into the room beyond the door. It lunged backwards from the impact, and after a few moments of thrashing in its death throes, fell silent at last.
Roth got to his feet and dusted himself off. The others had flattened themselves against the floor as close to the far sides of the morgue hallway as possible. Odessa had thrown her arms over her head, the gun resting uselessly now in her slack grip. She only held the trigger now in the hopes of taking her own life, rather than become prey to the monstrosity from her island home. Oscarson and Klein were both unarmed now, as Emil had dropped his weapon to join David behind the empty receptionist desk.
Luckily, she was only in the second week of her maternity leave.
“Everyone all right?” Jacobs asked as he tentatively stepped up on the collapsed door and made his way inside the autopsy room, where the Chupacabra now lay much as it had when they retrieved it after the accident. From the gaping wound in its abdomen near the sternum, the shattered ribs exposed, there was no possibility that it was merely stunned this time. It was dead at last. The pathologists and Miss Davis had made their way behind him and now stood looking out upon the fallen creature from the safety of his shoulders and the now reloaded shotgun.
“What do we do with it?” Emil asked, his accent thick with fear and unresolved emotions.
“Fortunately, that matter is no longer any of your concern.”
All four turned from the doorway and saw a sea of military fatigues. A general, replete with four stars and eyes shaded with polarized glasses, removed his hat and propped it under one arm. “This is now a matter of national security for the United States government. Deputy, you are to stand down and wait for debriefing, along with your friends, at my discretion. Do you understand?”
They all nodded.
When he removed his glasses without introducing himself, Odessa gasped in recognition.
He was one of the men in black who had interrogated her while in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
“Good to see you again, too. Ms. Davis.”
FAMILY
“Odessa, do you know this man?” Roth asked skeptically, his hand struggling to stay off his holster and service revolver. True, he was outgunned and outnumbered by a half dozen men in military berets and camouflage uniforms. Special forces by the look of them, one or two spoiling for a fight as they flanked behind the general.
“I wish I could say I didn’t,” Davis replied, without emotion. She never broke eye contact once the military leader removed his glasses and she recognized the disciplined set of his jaw and the iron-willed determination in his steely gray eyes. The general had been one of three men who sat down and simultaneously brief and debriefed the young radio astronomer about her activities with the Puerto Ricans regarding sightings of the Chupacabra.
“Couldn’t stay out of it, leave well enough alone now, could you?” He stepped forward as he deposited the flight glasses in a pocket sealed with a brass button bearing the emblem of the U.S. Army. “You know, I didn’t get these Stars and Bars by being stupid. Many of us never reach this rank without a Ph.D., Ms. Davis. Call me paranoid, but I never believed you were convinced that there was nothing to our little talk beyond parting words. We meant what we said. You were deported to the mainland to get your nose out of military affairs.”
“Military affairs?” Jacobs broke in as he instinctively wedged his shoulder into the closing gap between the black woman and the slowly advancing general. “If I’m not mistaken, this is a civil investigation into a cattle mutilation that ended with the death of the animal that killed the prize bull of a local rancher. That’s all. End of story.”
“End of story,” the general chuckled. He felt under no obligation to identify himself or the purpose of his untimely invasion of a small east Texas community like Jefferson. “It seems that Odessa did not have time to fill you in on the history of her final hours at Arecibo, let alone what she suspected about the involvement of the U.S. government in what you just blew away, deputy. It’s better this way, I suppose.”
“What do you intend to do with us?” Emil Oscarson asked fearfully, the trauma of the Chupacabra attack still reflected in his trembling frame and wide eyes.
“You? Nothing. Nothing at all. You’re private citizens. We’re here to protect you at all costs,” the general replied evenly, assessing the situation as non-threatening and nodded tersely for his men to either side to stand down. Two men in contamination gear were called in by short wave radio and ordered into the autopsy room to bag the remains of the Goatsucker. As it was taken out, three others in regular dress uniforms donned masks and latex gloves to perform a search, which was quickly concluded when one, a young corporal with red hair and a heavy spray of freckles across his flattened nose, indicated he had located the package.
A third biohazard technician was standing by to take into custody an object that appeared to be ribbed, hard shelled and about nine inches in length. It was conical, but appeared to taper at the short end and folded over with deeply set lines at the other. It was quickly placed in a black acrylic box a foot long, six inches wide and perhaps four inches deep. To Jacobs, let alone Odessa, it meant only one thing.
The military already knew what they were looking expecting to find.
“You got what you came for,” the deputy said. “Take it and leave us alone.”
“I would if we were finished here,” the four star general explained. “You think this operation is simply a mop up of the mess you and Ms. Davis here made of the encroachment of an unknown biological entity? She is not the reason we’re here, Deputy Jacobs, is it?” Roth nodded as the general read his brass nametag set above his badge on the brown and gold pocket of his uniform shirt.
“We were tipped by the University in Texas in Austin where, apparently, one of your two pathologists here got the bright idea to have the lab there identify the DNA of the Chupacabra against a nationwide databank. They couldn’t find a match, but we could. It was only coincidental that Ms. Davis happened to be in the vicinity. Having her appear only moments before us was a pleasant confirmation that you had to be involved, all of you.”
The unsmiling military leader took the four civilians in with a single, withering gaze.
“That s
till doesn’t explain why a general would come all the way from Puerto Rico just to follow after an unemployed radio astronomer,” Odessa observed, sarcastically.
“On the contrary, it has everything to do with our being here. You have a little bit of knowledge, which in the wrong hands could be a dangerous thing. Had it simply been a case of retrieval, certainly I would have sent my men. But since you were bound to put in an appearance against my final instructions to you, I had to press the point home that it would be a very bad idea to go shooting your mouth off to the local police or, worse yet, the town newspaper.”
'No wonder Borjon’s article never managed to hit the wire services', Jacobs mused.
“As for our little discussion in Arecibo, that was a special trip. I am stationed stateside, in D.C.”
“Then, what are you doing here?” Klein asked with more than a little trepidation.
“Finally, a reasonable question,” the general responded, with an approving finger jabbed in the direction of the coroners, who stood huddle together and shifting uncomfortably. “I have come to see that the remainder of this operation is not botched, and to see that Ms. Davis is properly motivated to keep her nose out of the business of national security.”
“National security?” All four of the civilians in the