its disproportionate body and hurled up and through the ceiling glass.
None too soon, it had evaded the armed soldiers, which arrived in time to cover their heads against the falling glass and debris. It could hear but not understand the shouts that it was now within the compound set up to protect the humans and house its mate and offspring. With a single bound, it ran off the slanted rooftop and landed thirty feet away, on top of the mobile laboratory in the parking lot. The door was standing wide open, and the two humans in white ran out at the sight of it poised on the hood of their vehicle, screaming under their masks.
It dropped and shielded its eyes as it made its way inside, following other senses than sight to the recesses where the body was kept in refrigeration and the unborn pupa lay in incubation. They were trying to hatch it, probably for purposes of dissection. In the confusion that followed, Klein tentatively stepped past Jacobs, now relieved of his weapon, and bid them all to follow him. “Why didn’t you tell me the door could be opened from the inside when it was locked outside?” the half-Cajun deputy groused.
“Now deputy, how much sense would it make to try and keep a dead body from getting out. It can be locked from the inside as well. Besides, you didn’t ask,” David replied. Emil Oscarson shrugged his shoulders in agreement and nodded.
Odessa interrupted the pair before the merits of unshared information escalated between the two. “Never mind that, now. Emil, is there a back door, another way out that doesn’t go past the soldiers?”
“Yes, but why?” Oscarson replied, pointing the way to a sliding glass door behind a curtain partition. Davis quickly relayed a plan that soon found the door to the second autopsy room shut and locked from within and Jacobs following the young black woman out of the sliding glass door. By the time they shut it behind them and made their way along the back side of the mobile lab, the pair could hear the shouted protest of the two coroners, now locked back inside, that they were all four okay but refused to come out.
The coaxing would not last long, and the military would either give up on them or figure out that only the two thickly accented Scandinavians were inside. Roth took Odessa by the hand and pulled her to his chest, as a guard passed dangerously close by them on his way to the partially opened patio door. He was even then calling in a report to the general that the creature may have doubled back and was even now heading their way.
The deputy and the radio astronomer rounded the front of the truck and made their way up the steps to the interior of the lab. Odessa cautioned Roth to be careful, but the deputy had already retrieved his service revolver from the driver’s cab, where all their belonging had been stashed for safekeeping.
He had only time to check the remaining shells and close the .38 caliber again before he was confronted in the doorway with a screeching hiss and the three-foot lash of an exoskeletal proboscis. It shot out from between the fangs and proffered claws of the wounded Chupacabra. Jacobs knew from the wound that it was not the one he had shot earlier; there was just too much of it intact. There was something strange in the way it confronted him. It was not attempting to escape or kill him.
If anything, it was drawing his fire, as if it knew it would soon die, regardless.
Jacobs fired point blank into the chest of the Chupacabra, throwing it backwards against the wall until it slithered down, leaving a trail of red and green viscid fluids. Before he could take aim again, the Chupacabra kicked out with its powerful legs and drove Roth to his knees. Odessa was sent reeling behind him, as it leapt up and sped past out the door. It looked back only once in an effort to express an emotion, but only hissed weakly and ran the tip of its tongue along the slit of its mouth.
Then, it was gone.
Shots rang out shortly thereafter, trailing off into the woods behind the coroner’s office, as the Chupacabra led the men away from the building and the mobile lab. Odessa helped Roth to his feet, who now understood why they were given shots against an attack by one of the creatures. He only hoped it included penicillin for the two sets of three puncture wounds throbbing painfully in his upper thighs.
Davis stopped when she had Jacobs halfway up with a sharp intake of breath.
“What? Are you okay, Odessa? Did it get you, too?” The deputy checked her as he rose.
“No, deputy. I’m fine, really. Look there,” she gestured as Jacobs turned to match her gaze.
There were now two pupae lying on the incubation tray. Male and female in each.
A new generation.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” The Creole woman smiled up at the deputy.
“I don’t know how or why, but I have a notion where this is all leading,” Roth answered.
“You’re impossible. You know that, deputy?” Davis smiled, as they collected the two unborn Chupacabra, his hat, club and keys. They were gone five minutes later when the first of the returning soldiers noticed the missing patrol car. It was nearly twenty minutes before the two coroners were extricated or coaxed out of the autopsy room. They put up a good front in refusing to leave, because of the threat of the Chupacabra. Once it was discovered that the deputy sheriff and the troublesome Arecibo technician were not with them, the pair of Swedes could honestly tell the enraged general that they had no idea where the other two had gone.
“It’s just as well,” Wilkes replied. We got the second Chupacabra. It put up one hell of a fight, once we cornered it. Funny thing, it’s like it just decided it had run far enough and decided to make a last stand against more than a dozen heavily armed troops. I just hope there’s enough of it left to study. At that moment, his harried lieutenant rushed to his side and gave Wilkes an unwelcome report. The general looked at the subordinate officer as if he wanted to demote him then and there.
“Problem, general?” Emil asked, innocently.
“No, doc. Nothing at all. It seems that the Chupacabra must have made it into the trailer, where the good deputy shot it a second time, before it escaped with the egg. Even if it threw the pupa aside, there are enough tracks and men for us to retrace and reconnoiter the area. Whether we find something or not, we’ve got other hotspots to investigate.”
“But, what about our friends?” David Klein asked, pleadingly.
General Wilkes thought long and hard, then shook his head in resignation.
“Not much we can do for them now, poor civilians. Probably scared off by all the action. They served their purpose and their country, well enough. No sense in giving Ms. Davis any more credibility by continuing to hound her or that deputy. Funny, though. I really thought he had more guts than to run off like that…”
A month later, Roth Jacobs returned to Jefferson after sending an email to Sheriff Crawley that he had been through a pretty rough ordeal and decided to take some time off to collect himself. He was tan, fit and smiling. It was on a Friday, and Jefferson Observer publisher Jeremy Borjon paid a visit to deliver a copy of the paper with a follow-up story to the mystery of the death of Sykes’ prize bull, Percy.
In the article, he alluded to the legends of the Chupacabra, but nothing about the incident along the highway when a car hit one of the Goatsucker. The story was not even his, but rather picked up from the wire services, as the town was still unsettled by rumors of stalking nocturnal creatures. Roth flipped the paper open and couldn’t help but give a lopsided grin, in response to the headline.
ANCIENT GODS DEPICTED ON TEMPLE RUINS REVERED AND FED BY MODERN DAY MAYANS
Chupacabra Alive and Well in Central America, States Local Authority Odessa Davis
Borjon interrupted the deputy’s reverie, as he browsed the article beneath. “Look, Jacobs, I kept my side of the bargain. No true tales of monsters, no panic in the streets. Now, level with me. You disappeared after working some kind of cleanup detail with the military. Anything you want to tell me?” Borjon sat expectantly on the corner of Roth’s desk, as Bill James pretended not to listen.
“Off the record?” The half-Cajun deputy sheriff asked innocently.
“Of
course,” Jeremy pressed.
“Nope.”
“You’re impossible!” Borjon protested as he stood up and stormed out of the office.
Roth Jacobs pulled open the shallow drawer of his desk, where he’d taped a photograph of himself with his arm around Odessa’s shoulder and hers around his waist. In each of their hands, they held what looked to be an object the size and color of a loaf of French bread.
Two Chupacabra only days from birth.
“So they tell me,” he said.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dallas Tanner was born in 1956, at the stroke of midnight during the worst storm of the century to that date, in the seacoast township of North Kingston, Rhode Island. The eldest child of a career naval officer, he attended 9 schools in 12 years, as they moved about the country. His interest in local myths, legends and all things paranormal grew out of the ever-changing diversity of his upbringing.
His first novel, “Shadow of the Thunderbird”, was required reading at a large technical college in South Carolina. He has frequently lectured, appeared on radio and television shows, and presented at conferences on his books and interest in cryptozoology. He is often cited in the media as an expert on unknown or unexpected animals. He was instrumental in salvaging Dan Taylor’s Nessie chaser mini-subs, the Viperfish and the Nessa II,