

Also Written by

DALLAS TANNER

NOVELS

THE CRYPTIDS TRILOGY

Shadow of the Thunderbird

Track of the Bigfoot

Wake of the Lake Monster

The Shroud
CHUPACABRA

Dallas Tanner

www.dallastanner.com

TRILOGUS BOOKS

www.trilogus.com
Chupacabra: A Novella

Copyright © 2009 by Dallas Tanner

Published by Trilogus Media Group, LLC at Smashwords

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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### THE FIRST ATTACK

It stood no taller than a child, with large eyes peering out from the dark. It watched hungrily as the elderly rancher led his prize bull into the barn for the night. There was no sclera or iris, only highly reflective pupils accustomed to the nocturnal life for which it was bred. They tapered at a sharp angle on either end to a slant covering nearly a third of its oval head, which came to a point at the chin of its prominent jaw. The creature was four feet tall, average among its kind, which ranged from three to five feet in height. Like the faces of the alien grays which shared its unaltered skin color and elongated eyes, the ears, nostrils and mouth were little more than small holes and a slit, but in the latter case lined with fangs and sharp teeth.

It swayed restlessly on two powerful hind legs while it balanced itself precariously using its short forearms. Three-toed splayed feet tipped with razor sharp talons dug eagerly at the soft ground, while three-fingered claws dangled limply before it. With its robust lower and frail upper body, the way it held its arms out before it gave the creature the appearance of a praying mantis. A row of spikes edged with fins ran from the top of its head down the length of its back. Coarse feathery quills of dark brown interspersed with patches of fur covered its body.

It bristled in anticipation as it darted its long, proboscis-like tongue as if sampling the air like a snake. When the unsuspecting cattle owner closed and padlocked the bolt of the barn door for the evening, it hissed and shook membranous wings that ran up the underside of its thin arms. Meeting at the back of its shoulders, the loose skin that formed its opaque wings trailed down again to attach along the sides of its grotesque body to the birdlike hips. Many never reported seeing this aspect of the creature, due to the thin arms held close to the body at all times.

When the solitary lamp light on the barn gable replaced that of the front porch with a slam of the screen door, it sensed that it was finally alone. It swiveled its bulbous head in slow, jerky, mechanical motions atop an impossibly thin neck. The lidless eyes glowed red and orange as they reflected the sparse light available to them. By day, the moist gelatinous orbs were far less noticeable, almost black in their crimson depth. A protective membrane could be drawn and layered over them to filter the sunlight. It had watched and waited all day for its opportunity, blending with its surroundings by turning the gray mottled flesh on all but its hideous face varying shades of purple, brown and yellow. As night approached, it no longer shifted like a chameleon, but stayed hidden until the two men and a woman tending the caged animals had gone into the house. Above all else, it shunned the human keepers of its prey. If the noxious odor surrounding it was offensive and debilitating, its breath was nothing short of overwhelming to any that encountered it.

The hayloft remained open above the barn door, a block and tackle extending out from the rafter supporting the structure. The opening was too high to reach in a single leap from the ground, but not from the work shed nearby. It ran deceptively fast on the tips of its sharp toes with its heels held high, reaching almost to the back of its knees. It was another adaptation of the hunter for stealth and maneuverability. It hopped periodically like a kangaroo to cross the barnyard in eight-foot high bounds.

After each step, it would stop to see that it still went unnoticed. It listened with its highly sensitive ear holes until it was certain it had not been seen, then continued unabated. It quickly drew next to the supporting posts of the smaller building. The lower roof of the shed housing the tractor was over twelve feet off the ground, but no matter. The odd angles of its body compressed and, with a burst of energy, uncoiled like a spring to the asbestos and tarpaper overhang to the wooden gutter that framed it.

Ignoring the lesser beasts in abundance that night, fowl, rabbit and even a dog barking in its pen at the edge of an old sharecropper's road, it gauged the distance from the rooftop to the four foot square opening beneath the barn gable. Then, as it had so many times before, it thrust itself out over open space to glide thirty feet at a slight incline over the yard to the hayloft. It could not fly or even levitate as some believed, and many never even reported its wings. It was mistakenly assumed that its claws alone allowed it to climb the trees where it was so often sighted.

It was thought to be confined, since the first reports circulated in 1991, to a vast, impenetrable tract of dense jungle called El Yunque on the island of Puerto Rico, but that was only the beginning of its notoriety on the mainland. The first documented case of its attack on farm animals came in 1975. The rumors of its existence circulated the island since the early 1950s. When its numbers and competition increased over more closely guarded food, its kind took refuge as stowaways on unsuspecting ships to other Caribbean islands, where their reputation had not preceded them.

In the late 1990s and into the twenty-first century, the sightings of these creatures spread into Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Brazil and, more recently, the southern United States. A greater number of encounters were reported in states with a concentration of Hispanic populations, among them Florida, California, Arizona and Texas. Many believed that it was only a cultural phenomenon moving north with the influx of Spanish-speaking people into America. Disbelief only better served its purpose. No one ever locked their doors against superstition.

El Chupacabra, The Goatsucker, was about to feed again...

* * *

The telephone jangled at quarter past eight the next morning, a late '60s surplus model turned lengthwise on its cradle. It was a leftover from his recently retired predecessor, who never used it enough to find a need to replace it. Startled out of a pleasant dream of lounging on a tropical beach, half-Cajun born Roth Jacobs dropped his polished boots to the floor from where he crossed them on the desk. The rollaway chair creaked in protest as he reached for the offensive telephone, no less upset than if he'd been awakened at two in the morning. So little happened in the sleepy little town.

This had better be good.

"Jefferson Sheriff's Office, Deputy Jacobs here. Can I help you?" The baritone voice, with just a hint of the distinctive French dialect, crept in to betray the lanky, dark-haired man's upbringing in nearby Shreveport, Louisiana, fifty-five miles due east across the Texas state line. In spite of the proximity, there was a world of difference in the influences of their underlying cultures. Jacobs hadn't long been on the force, quitting the horseback patrol of the French Quarter in New Orleans for a quieter lifestyle not three months earlier.

Why Jefferson?

He asked himself that very question. The panicked cattle rancher on the other end of the line demanded a second time that Jacobs put the sheriff on the telephone, immediately. "Hold on just a moment, now. Slow it down and catch your breath. Who is this, anyway? You had a what?"

"...My prize Brahma bull, Percy, was attacked last night in his stall. I locked the barn and it doesn't look as if anyone could have gotten in or out. I didn't go back until I opened it this morning and there weren't even any footprints in the sawdust and meal on the floor. No offense, deputy, but this is an emergency. For the last time, this is Olin Sykes out near Caddo Lake and I need Sheriff Crawley right now!"

"I'm sorry. He's not here, Mr. Sykes. In fact, he's in Dallas this week for re-certification in legal search and seizure, for all the good that will in Jefferson. Suppose you tell me what happened from the beginning and let's see where we go from here. Okay?" The voice on the other end of the line fell silent, discouraged and resigned. Roth had heard the same dead space on the telephone several times before since arriving in town and filling the vacated deputy's position, although he'd come highly recommended. It was the sound of an unspoken request to be handed over to anyone else there in a uniform.

Not this time.

"Better I show you. Do you remember how to get out here to the edge of bayou country?"

Jacobs bristled at Olin's remark. It was an invitation to leave if he'd somehow forgotten the way back to the boggy swamps of Louisiana. After all, what other reason was there for a Cajun to stick around in the dry flatlands so close to home? Ignoring the insult and maintaining a demeanor reserved for the drunken revelers of Mardi Gras, Deputy Roth Jacobs asked for directions. He had been out to the old Sykes place when Sheriff Gerald Crawley had taken him there on a routine call during his first week on the force. Unlike that empty-handed search for trespassers, the deputy hoped it wouldn't be just another false alarm.

Driving southeast along the two-lane asphalt of Highway 134, Jacobs followed signs to Caddo Lake, which straddled the state lines bordering Texas and Louisiana. The lake was northeast of Marshall to the 26,000-acre Big Cypress Bayou in Harrison and Marion counties. Just under a third of that area was Caddo, 7,681 acres of primarily bald cypress swamp and flooded bottomland hardwoods. He had been there often growing up, the first time shortly after the original dam impounding the lake in 1914 was replaced in 1971. Sure, it dated him, and he should probably be a sheriff in his own right by now. He'd turned down a detective's badge in downtown New Orleans for a peaceful life in the country, so why ruin a good thing?

The Sykes T-Bar Ranch was partially annexed by the Caddo Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA), owned by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) and managed as a part of the TPWD Public Hunting Program. Naturally, old man Sykes was paranoid that anyone without a gun was a surveyor trying to parcel up another chunk of his land. Hunters weren't allowed to stray over onto his property, either. A poacher had probably sent an errant round into Olin's barn and accidentally hit the stud bull by mistake. No big deal. Roth would file a report and resume his nap after lunch. Sheriff and deputy had found nothing on their last visit, and there was no reason, at this point, to think otherwise of this one.

Roth drove the brown and gold Plymouth squad car through the open gate and down the quarter mile of unpaved road overhung with Spanish moss to the ranch. The deputy parked and switched off the engine next to a rusted out, sea foam green pickup with aluminum rails and dead California tags. He'd look into that next, but first things first. Taking up his hat and club from the passenger seat, he donned them both as he got out and yelled for Sykes. On his first call, he got no answer. The 63-year-old rancher interrupted him on the second attempt and stepped out, waving his arm from the barn door for the deputy to follow. Olin disappeared back inside as Jacobs trotted across the barnyard.

The officer hesitated at the sliding door, looking at the lever that would be lowered across the threshold to prevent it from opening. A heavy padlock was looped through the oversized hinge. It could not have fallen off or been anything but raised from the inside or out by lifting the steel handle and disengaging the bar, much the same way as the latch on a trailer. No doubt about it, Sykes had gone to great lengths to protect his property from vandals. Leaning back, Roth checked for bullet holes on the door or barn wall to either side. Nothing. Jacobs then looked up. The gable block hung loose but the rope on the tackle was pulled into the open loft. No access there.

"Deputy? I need you in here, now!"

The air inside the barn was thick with the musty smell of feed and livestock. Sunlight filtered down through narrow slats to form columns of dust and early morning haze, but otherwise most of the interior was unlit. He could distinguish the shapes of farm equipment and hay bales in the near dark as he made his way along the row of split rail stalls to where Sykes knelt with Jorge Ramirez, a migrant worker from Juarez, Mexico. He came cheap, with no family in tow, asking only room and board until harvest season began. Standing at the gate was Olin's daughter Miranda, a recently divorced single mother with designs on the deputy. She smiled through a face stretched too taut without flattering contours.

Tipping the brim of his hat slightly towards her with the obligatory "Ma'am," Roth stepped past the dishwater blonde, through the stall gate and stood, hands draped on gun belt, at the foot of the dead Brahma bull. It lay on its side, the lids of its normally big dark eyes closed and sunken. The large, drooping ears were not torn off, but shredded. There was a series of triple lacerations on the darker brown of its knotted hump, just above the massive shoulders. On the rest of its roan hide were smaller abrasions, probably self-inflicted, as if the animal struggled briefly to escape its attacker. From the size of the hole just at the base of its skull, it appeared that the half-ton blue ribbon stud was shot at point blank range with a large caliber weapon. There was no exit wound and no blood splatter, on the wall or anywhere else, for that matter.

"Did you hear anything, Mr. Sykes? Did you see anything? Whether or not this animal was dropped where it stood or thrashed about before it died, there should have been some kind of a ruckus. Nobody would bother putting on a silencer to kill a bull. This is wanton destruction of property, not a mob hit." Jacobs pulled a report book from his back pocket as Olin protested that he was not aware of any noise during the night.

During the night?

In spite of his present circumstances, Jacobs knew rigor mortis when he saw it. In this climate, setting in should have taken much longer. The hoofed legs were already straight out and stiff, the lips and tongue distended, discolored and swollen. It always begins with the face, extending outward to the extremities. In this animal, all except the belly, which appeared much thinner than he would have expected in the death of a bovine. With Sykes' permission, he pressed down on the stomach and relieved what little bloat of methane had built up in the bull's four stomachs. He was not a cattleman familiar with large animals, so he had Olin check as well. Something was wrong. There were no cuts and yet it appeared as if one or more organs of this animal had been removed.

Along with its livelihood as a stud.

"Well, I'll be damned," Sykes replied, trading confused looks with the deputy, his daughter and finally his suddenly alarmed farm hand, who bolted upright with terror filled eyes. "Ramirez, what's gotten into you?" The migrant worker inexplicably turned and ran from the barn as Olin shouted after him to come back. The frightened man cried in warning over his shoulder but lapsed into his native language out of fear. Jacobs understood only enough Spanish to realize that 'no trabajo' meant Jorge was quitting without notice. Another unrecognizable phrase was uttered repeatedly during the apologetic raving as the transient Mexican jumped into his old Dodge pickup truck and left for good in a cloud of dust.

El Chupacabra.

### THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

"Now, what do you suppose got into him?" Miranda Sykes asked distractedly as she looked for the Mexican's truck through the cloud of dust it left in its wake. The last sound they heard was the kicking up off loose gravel when the rusted out pickup finally caught the pavement and squealed tires up the highway.

"I don't have a clue," her father commented as he turned his attention back to his dead bull.

Roth Jacobs could tell in a single sidewise glance that Olin had the same estimation of what happened in his barn the night before. A half-ton Brahma killed in its stall with no apparent motive and a weapon that spilled no blood. "Do you have any idea who might have wanted to do this? Was there anyone who might be angry with you for putting them off your land? I'm thinking maybe a hunter, somebody who'd have no more of a problem killing a cow than a bear. Anybody come to mind?"

"Bull, deputy. Bull!" Jacobs wasn't sure whether the rancher was correcting the gender of the animal or simply responding that it had nothing to do with disgruntled poachers. Olin Sykes removed his hat and wiped his balding pate with the back of his shirtsleeve. "Hunter? No, I can't think of anyone. You're assuming that I made somebody mad enough that they trespassed onto my property. My land's marked clearly enough and the damn fences are electrified. If they got jolted, it was their fault for not reading the English language. The only one with that problem just left here in a big hurry."

"Jealousy, now there's a reason for you." Sykes narrowed his eyes and nodded his head with suspicion. "Everybody around here knows that Percy was the best stud for hire in Harrison and Marion counties. I get top dollar for passing on his pedigree, his bloodlines to other ranchers. He was getting old, though, poor fellow. He'd been with just about every cow worth having in a forty-mile radius. No reason to do this. His days of siring were just about over."

The deputy glanced up at Miranda, who shrugged her shoulders before excusing herself to go look after her four year-old daughter. "How do you mean?" Roth asked, turning his attention back to the elder Sykes. He never pretended to know anything about cattle, and knew that to profess any more now would only hurt any investigation he hoped to attempt. This was not a murder, at least not a homicide, in spite of the old man's urgency.

"Not an expert in bovines either, Jacobs?" Olin stood, raising himself to his full five-foot seven inches as he stretched his back and his knees popped. "No self-respecting bull will return to the same cow. Ever. Even if his age wasn't an issue, there was hardly a reason to do this. All I can think of is that somebody wanted him out of the way. That leaves only other ranchers with stud bulls. Percy's ribbon days were over and he was ready for pasture. No, anyone who'd do such a thing would have to be another rancher with a bone to pick with me. This was personal, deputy, and I want you to find out who did it."

"Anyone in particular you might have offended?" Roth asked as he jotted down his report.

Olin laughed, wincing as he rotated a cramped arm at the arthritic shoulder. "Son, I've been at this business over fifty years, man and boy. In all that time, I never let anyone get the upper hand on me, whether they were better than me or not. I always convinced folks in these parts that my bulls were the ones to beat.

"Looks like somebody believed you," Jacobs commented as he closed the pad and nodded toward the dead Brahma. Bottle flies reflected blue and green in the early morning sun as they buzzed the open sores. The bloodless wounds. It didn't make any sense as to why the bull went down so easily, let alone how it was killed. There was no sound, nothing to alert the rancher. This wasn't over, because Sykes wasn't about to let it alone. In Roth's estimation, there could only be one suspect and one motive for killing a stud bull about to lose his value. As much as he hated to do it, the Jefferson deputy had one question left for the distraught rancher.

"Mr. Sykes, did you have this bull insured?"

Olin gaped open mouthed at the thinly veiled accusation. "What, you're asking me if I did this for the money? Sure, I had a policy on him, but prize bulls aren't moneymakers like winning racehorses. In his condition and age, I'd be lucky to get fifteen grand for him now, and that's only if they don't blame me like you just did. Don't you understand? I get nothing if I kill my own bull!"

Roth Jacobs stood and put the report book back in his pocket as Sykes calmed himself.

"Look, I was afraid you might think I did this, what with the locked barn door and me not hearing anything so violent in the dead of night on my own ranch. I swear to you, I didn't do this and Miranda's not covering for me. If you can figure out how this happened, whether you think I could manage it or anybody else, I'd be much obliged."

"I'll do my best, Olin. In the meantime, this is an investigation and that bull is evidence. Don't get any fool ideas of destroying it until I can get somebody out here to take a closer look at the carcass. I'd be curious to know what happened to all the blood and if that's all it's missing. Okay?"

Old man Sykes agreed, reminding the sheriff's deputy that there wasn't much time and inviting him to stay for lunch. Miranda was cooking blackened catfish, scratch biscuits and dirty rice with red bean gravy, and would love for him to stay. Passing on the offer of a meal, Jacobs asked the rancher why he was in such a hurry.

"Percy will be ripe in a day or two, and with Ramirez gone It'll take that long to find somebody else to help me get him out of here. I really don't want to look at him until then, let alone smell him. There's a meatpacking plant run by a friend midway between Jefferson and Marshall. Any problem if I call him to take Percy to the cooler while you figure out who did this to him?"

Jacobs got the name and the number of the man who ran the plant, but only gave the go ahead once he found out that it was still in his jurisdiction. The last thing he wanted was for Sykes to pull a fast one and start over with a fresh but ignorant sheriff's office. He declined a second invitation to stay and have something to eat, in spite of her father's assertion that Miranda would be broken-hearted that he turned her down.

Roth thanked the rancher for his time and asked Sykes to pass along his apologies to Miranda. Under the circumstances, he considered staying for a meal a conflict of interest, now that both Olin and his daughter were potential suspects in a possible fraud. He would leave it to the insurance company to decide whether its owners staged the death of the bull for the insurance money. If not them, then how or why was as big a mystery as by whom.

Jacobs removed his hat and club, dropping them both to the passenger seat of the squad car as he got in and started the engine. Olin stood at the door to his barn, while Miranda Sykes wiped her hands on a dishcloth, half-hidden by the screen door to the house. She turned away as the deputy circled the Plymouth around in the yard and headed back up the moss-shaded drive back to the highway. Nothing personal, but part of the reason he left New Orleans in the first place were the bad memories of a failed marriage.

He was so committed to his career, five years of working nights in the French Quarter, that one morning he went home and his childhood sweetheart just wasn't there. She'd taken their three year-old son and went back home to Baton Rogue and filed for divorce. The last thing he wanted or needed in his life at that moment was yet another reminder of his past. No, it was better this way, he decided.

The deputy was no more than six miles out from Caddo Lake at the edge of the Big Cypress Bayou on 134 headed west when he passed Jeremy Borjon going in the opposite direction. He had to be headed to the Sykes place. Borjon was the editor and publisher of Jefferson's only newspaper, a weekly called The Jefferson Observer.

The National Enquirer was more like it. In a small east Texas town, as in any around the country where little happened of real importance, gossip and sensationalism were the order of the day. The Observer's goal was the same as any grocery store tabloid; to sell papers. Unlike the aisle rags, there was little need to make anything up. News traveled fast along the party lines and back porches of the sleepy little community.

Still, it was only 10:30 in the morning and Roth was certain he had gotten the first call. Olin could have placed another with the newspaper to help his cause in getting reimbursed for his loss, but why? Jorge spoke only broken English and would not have been compensated for carrying any tales on his employer. Not to mention alerting the IMS to his illegal alien status. Who then?

Miranda...

She was probably upset with him for not paying her any more attention than he had over the course of his time in Jefferson. Refusing to break bread with the Sykes while he was out there probably didn't help. The timing just wasn't right for Borjon to know about the killing and be out there so soon. Somebody had to tip him off in the last hour. The editor-in-chief was never one to wait on a story to come to him. These thoughts swirled around the strange circumstances of the bull's death. The backlash from covering the story and putting it in the paper would certainly interfere with his investigation.

Tuesday. Jacobs checked his calendar watch to be sure. That gave him four days until the latest edition hit the stands, on Friday morning. Jeremy laughingly claimed that it gave the townsfolk something to do over the weekend. Maybe he was right. At any rate, Roth considered contacting the Observer publisher after he returned from interviewing Olin and his daughter. The county magistrate could issue a gag order, but the two, as he understood it, were old fishing buddies. No help there.

The deputy had only four days before this was news to the community. He could at least appeal to Borjon's sense of propriety in exchange for an exclusive on whatever the investigation uncovered. Maybe that would keep the reporter quiet. No doubt about it, Jeremy wore many hats in the little seven-man operation. Even if more happened in and around Jefferson, he doubted that the antiquated press of the newspaper could handle putting out anything more frequently. Their only competition to sales was gossip, plain and simple.

Maybe Jeremy Borjon would keep quiet if only to scoop the rumor mill.

Deputy Jacobs was on the outskirts of Jefferson when he passed a roadside bar and grill. He always saw the same three vehicles parked in front of it, during the day. Two belonged to the owner and his only employee, the bartender and Calvin Smootz. Smootz was on and off the wagon so many times that he often forgot whether he was early or late for his next AA meeting. Roth only knew him because of the number of times Calvin had slept off a binge in an unlocked cell back at the office. Just why he drank, nobody knew and, typical of a judgmental God-fearing town, the good people of Jefferson didn't care. He was a drunk and that was that.

This morning, Calvin wasn't drinking alone. The sea-foam green of a rusted out old Dodge pickup truck with aluminum railings caught the corner of his eye and Roth swung the patrol car about at the only stoplight leading into town. There were definitely four cars in the graveled parking lot. Specifically, two cars, a truck and a beaten up scooter with a wire basket on the back, the only transportation allowed Smootz after so many DUIs.

The truck belonged to Jorge Ramirez. No need to check the tags, Jacobs decided as he pulled alongside for the second time that morning and got out of the brown and gold Plymouth to read the plates. Dead Texas stickers. "It's him all right," the deputy sheriff decided and went inside. Between the creaking of the screen door, the bell over the top to check who was leaving without paying their tab and the unintentional slam that accompanied any entrance or exit, all but the Chris LeDoux music on the jukebox stopped when he entered the darkened bar. It smelled of alcohol and old smoke, but otherwise had a local charm that made it a favorite among older singles, as well as underage kids looking to sneak in for a place to dance.

Ramirez was seated at the end of the bar farthest from the door. He had forgone the shot glass in front of him and was downing the last of a bottle of tequila. As he chewed mechanically on the worm from the bottom of the fifth, he nervously glanced up at Jacobs in the barroom mirror. The deputy sheriff ordered a beer from the bartender and took the open stool beside the migrant worker.

"You okay?" Roth asked the Mexican, and was met with a stony silence. The more he drank, the less Jorge could contain the shaking with which he raised and downed his alcohol. Something had frightened the hell out of him, and Jacobs was determined to find out what it was. "You sure let out of the Sykes place in an awful hurry this morning, Mr. Ramirez. Is there something you'd like to tell me about what happened?"

Still no response.

"Look, I can take you in for suspicion of unlawful destruction of cattle, a felony in Texas. Once I get past the dead plates on your truck, there's always the little matter of your green card and work Visa from Mexico to be here. You do have them both, don't you?" Ramirez raised nothing but his eyes to the reflection in the barroom mirror of the deputy sheriff. There was nothing left to be gained in silence.

"I did not kill Percy. You must believe me, Officer Jacobs. Señor Sykes and his daughter have been very kind to me. I ask the patron saint of my village back in Juarez to bless their safety and prosperity. Theirs is mine, and I would do nothing to take the food, shelter or clothing from my wife and children. Please do not blame me for this, I beg of you."

Roth studied the young man's profusely sweating face and found recognition there as well as an inescapable fear. "If it wasn't you, and you don't believe that Olin or Miranda are responsible, why did you run off like that? You had to know once I found you again that I would ask you some very personal questions. Is that why you left? Were you afraid of being deported back to Mexico?"

"No, señor, not at all. I would welcome the safety of my family to what has happened here. There is much you don't know about my people and our way of life, but I believe you are a good man. I want to make you understand so that you can warn Sykes and the others. There is nothing you can do to protect them, but it does not matter. They are not in danger. It will not hurt people, but it will come for and kill their animals. It is always hungry and comes at night with fiery red eyes and a thirst for sangre."

"Sangre?"

"Blood, Mr. Jacobs. In its eyes and on its tongue. It is a sanguijuela, from the days of the ancient Mayans, a vampire from the stars."

### THE DOG AND THE DRUNKS

"It is a creature we call El Chupacabra, which means in English, 'The Goatsucker'. It has been known in the United States for only a short while, since 1996 I believe, but in that time the fear of this soulless beast has spread from Puerto Rico to Mexico. There are other countries of Central and South America with animals that have been killed in the same manner as this bull."

Ramirez eyed Jacob's beer and the deputy ordered one from the bartender, a former semi-pro wrestler by the name of Blayton Collier. He preferred to be called 'Blake' in and out of the ring. Still a considerable mountain of a man in spite of a ponderous middle age spread, no one dared call him by his given name. Without a word, the barkeep and owner of the Third Round pulled a draught from the cold tap and slid it down the bar to the two men as Roth nodded and asked to have it put on his tab.

"You called it a vampire. Does that have anything to do with the lack of blood around the body?"

"I have never seen where it attacked an animal so large, but yes. It bites the neck and makes a hole where the blood of the victim is drained. How it does it or why it never takes the meat, I do not know." Ramirez swigged at the beer and wiped the dribble at his chin. He was already clearly drunk, his normally darkened skin ruddy and his eyes unfocused as they tried to bore their meaning into those of the deputy sheriff.

"We had just such an attack in my village outside Juarez, three in fact, not two years ago while I was away in California with a group of men following the harvest in the San Juaquin Valley. These were chickens, rabbits and a child's pet, a young goat I think. In each case, the outcome was the same. There was no blood left in the body or spilled where it died. Whatever killed them did not want the flesh. It left the dead animal behind, where it stiffened as though it had laid there for days before it was found."

"Did you ever see one of these creatures?"

"Never," Jorge replied with a derisive laugh. His speech began to slur as he swayed on the stool.

"Then how do you know it exists, or even that we're talking about the same animal?"

Ramirez leaned over into Jacob's face, mere inches as he lowered his voice.

"As I said, you do not know my people. Unlike you Americans, we have very long memories about what affects our lives. El Chupacabra was not a fad that happened on Puerto Rico many years ago. It has spread to my country and others. It or others of its kind hunts there still. I have heard since from relatives living in Florida that animals have begun to die there in the same awful manner as well."

"You underestimate The Goatsucker. It does not follow our people. It follows our cattle and our livestock. It is not the legend that is spreading; it is the Chupacabra itself. It is here, whether you choose to believe it or not."

Ramirez nodded and jabbed his finger at the air around him.

"You, me, all of us. Those who depend on beasts for their livelihood will be decimated before this is through. As long as there is an animal alive and unguarded, it will remain. It will feed on the blood of the living and leave the flesh to rot. Mark my words, amigo, and heed my warning. Tell your people what is after their cattle before it is too late."

Roth saw that the drunken migrant worker was fading fast.

"How will I know the Chupacabra when I see one? What does it look like, Jorge?"

Ramirez laughed as tears of anguish welled up in his eyes. "El Diablo, señor. The Devil himself!"

Before the deputy could ask another question, the Mexican's head drooped down to his crossed arms on the counter. Within moments, he was snoring loudly. Jacobs shook his head. It would be hours before he could get another word out of the only person in town who understood what they were up against.

He took up his hat, motioned for the check and with the help of the barmaid was able to maneuver Ramirez to the back seat of the squad car. Roth then asked if it would be alright to leave Jorge's truck in the lot overnight.

"Sure," the strawberry bottle-blonde replied. "Outside of Smootz's Moped, it makes it look like we're crowded for a Tuesday morning anyway. She winked and went back inside, an exaggerated swing to her hips for the deputy's benefit. Jacobs managed to get the migrant worker into a half-sitting position with the seat belt drawn across his reclined chest.

He reversed the procedure when they arrived several blocks later into town at the sheriff's office. Bill James, the self-proclaimed 'man with two first names' and the only other deputy in Jefferson, helped get Ramirez inside. They laid him gently on the bunk of an open cell. The migrant worker shifted to find a comfortable position then resumed snoring languidly with his curled back to the deputies.

"Whew! What'd you do, douse him in kerosene?" James commented as he closed the cell door.

"That won't be necessary," Roth observed after explaining where he'd found Jorge, then thought better of leaving the door open. Even without his truck, Jacobs didn't want his only link to the slaughter of the bull to wander off. In spite of the Mexican's knowledge about similar crimes, he made a poor suspect in this case. He was truly traumatized by what happened, as much for the similarity to attacks back home in his own village as to think the same had begun here.

What would become of Ramirez in the off season from harvesting when the ranches that hired him opposite the farms had no cattle left to tend? Sure, the odds of the problem spreading to that extent were slim, but a man living hand to mouth to feed his family would look at any disruption as a threat to life if not limb.

Bill left to get sandwiches at the local Dairy Queen toward noon as Jacobs settled in to try and make some sense of the strange events leading up to the death of the bull. Try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to profile the culprit as an otherworldly bloodsucker capable of bringing down an animal twenty times its size and weight. As much as he'd detested the ringing telephone that morning while he was trying to catch up on his sleep, he was relieved that it rang again. The report could wait. There was routine police business piling up and needing his attention, if only in paperwork.

Please, let it be just another run of the mill complaint.

Roth immediately recognized the voice on the other end as that of the Third Round owner, Blayton Collier. He sounded angry and distraught, immediately going into a tirade about his Rottweiller, Champ. This time, there was blood out behind the bar, but no dog.

"Blake? No, it doesn't sound crazy. I just thought you were calling to gripe about me leaving that old Dodge pickup out in front of your place. I told Delores I wanted to park it for the time being, but I'll get it moved as soon as I can. Now, what's this about Champ?" Come to think of it, Jacobs was used to seeing the tan and black 125 pound canine lying by the front door, as effective as any bouncer. He was there as often as not, penned up in a cage off the back of the bar when he got rowdy or restless. It was Collier's way of making sure he didn't just run off after anything in heat.

At the suggestion from Roth that the dog was after some female, Blake did get upset. The cage Champ was kept in had been opened, the door thrown back against the fence, probably by the force of the Rottweiller rushing through it. The deputy sheriff put down the Sykes report, but this was certainly no reprieve. If anything, it would only get longer and more involved if the two incidents were related.

"I'll be right there," Jacobs sighed.

He met James at the door carrying lunch, paid him five dollars and took the meal with him.

"What about him?" Bill asked, indicating the dozing Ramirez.

"Book him for drunk and disorderly conduct. Set bail at $3000.00. That ought to hold him until I get back." In a small town like Jefferson, Texas, the sheriff or his duly appointed deputies had the authority to act in the absence of a travelling magistrate to impose minor sentences and set fines.

For the third time that day, Roth Jacobs pulled alongside the rusted out Dodge pickup and stepped out onto the cracked asphalt of the black top parking lot. The bottle red head was waiting at the door, chewing her bottom lip as she held it open for the deputy to step into the bar.

Passing through to where Smootz sat alone in a booth at the back of the Third Round, Jacobs opened another screen door off the kitchen and joined Blayton outside. Thirty feet removed from the back porch, the bartender stood at the gate of the enclosure, testing the grated door by swinging it on its hinges just inches above the worn ground beneath it.

"I just don't get it, deputy. I make sure this cage door is well-oiled, but there's no way it could've opened by itself, let alone Champ nudge it open. Somebody had to let him out, but I trained that dog myself to attack anybody who came back here without me."

"Are you sure that's a wise decision, Collier? I mean, that's a lot of liability to assume if somebody trespasses. You could be sued." Roth waited patiently for a response.

"I could be robbed or worse, more like it. You've stepped over that worthless dog on your way into the bar before. Hell, even Calvin can navigate around him, and he's drunk most of the time when he does it. If Champ knows you, all he's looking for is a scratch behind the ear or a pat on the head. If he don't take to you, well you're in for what you deserve, anyway."

Trespasser.

Again, that phrase leapt to the deputy's mind. Just as it had with the locked barn door back on the Sykes T-Bar ranch. The whole crime scene, if indeed there even was one in the case of the missing dog, was backwards to the report he investigated with the dead bull the preceding morning. Jacobs didn't want to associate yet another animal death with a superstition. Better to eliminate all the other possibilities first. What had they called it in the Sherlock Holmes books he read as a kid and dreamed of being a detective?

Ockham's Razor. The fastest way to the truth or the best explanation of something is to get unnecessary information out of the way first.

"Are you sure Champ didn't just hurt himself getting out of the cage and ran off after whatever got him so riled up?" Jacobs figured it was straightforward, logical and didn't involve a monstrous consequence. Blake would have none of it, and seemed ready to punch out the smaller deputy for taking the quickest solution. Still, it was a reasonable scenario, so he let it stand and looked around the garage area to the single path leading up into the secluded wooded hills beyond.

Coming to the same conclusion simultaneously, Collier called for Delores Watson, the waitress, to cover for him while the two men made their way up along the winding path. They hadn't gone twenty feet over the rise when they found a disturbed patch of tall grass. It looked as if a scuffle had occurred, with the long blades bent outward, flattened or broken by something wishing to see over them without being seen itself. It looked for all the world like a nest.

One stalk was covered in dried blood. Whatever had begun back at the cage didn't end here. They pressed on in nervous silence, watching the trail to either side for a departure that might indicate which way the Rottweiller went in pursuit of its prey. The ground was too hard to leave an impression, but on the cusp of a disturbed fire anthill twenty yards up the path was a faint set of tracks. One was large and padded, definitely Champ's paw print.

The other, partially obscured by that of the much larger dog, was the track of what looked to be a large bird, three-clawed with a half-turn. It was as if whatever the dog chased looked back before racing on before it. In the first similarity to the case of the prize bull, Jacobs wondered why the owner didn't hear anything. The blood was dried, and since Blayton didn't live at the Third Round, it could have happened the previous night or as late as early that morning.

Jacobs thought to ask the bar owner why he didn't notice or report the dog missing any sooner than he did, but the deputy had been called in more than once when Champ was wandering loose around Jefferson. Although he was gentle enough to those that knew him, Collier was right. The Rottweiller would just as soon sink his teeth to the bone in a stranger unless his master was around. No, something led the big dog up into the hills intentionally to get it away from prying eyes or listening ears.

The thought froze the deputy's blood. The Syke's ranch was over thirty miles away. What kind of animal could cover that much territory overnight and still muster the energy to outrun and overpower a 125-pound Rottweiller? How much would it have to feed to be driven to seek out two victims in one night so far apart? A glutted creature of any sort would be looking to rest after having its fill. There was another possibility that Roth Jacobs didn't want to entertain. If one of these Chupacabra existed, there might be two.

They suddenly came upon the body of Champ, wrapped around the base of a Pecan tree. It was as if he had been thrown there, to drape about the roots of the state tree.

Immediately, Jacobs worked with Collier to move the dog down the hill to the back of Ramirez's truck. As before, there was no blood other than where the Rottweiller had been scratched on the side and the bridge of its powerful muzzle. A gaping, perfectly round wound punched the side of the neck beneath the collar, where it was mercifully hidden from the owner. Smootz was gone, so there was no need for explanation. Not that the old drunk would have remembered anyway.

Delores chewed her gum nervously, but promised to say nothing to anyone else until given permission by the sheriff's department and Jacobs personally. She agreed with a wink, as if the request carried with it a certain obligation on his part. Roth shook it off and had Collier follow his squad car in the truck. The deputy sheriff called in the report to Bill James, who was unusually agreeable.

The second deputy contacted the county coroner's office, which happened to be located on the western outskirts of Jefferson. A human doctor would not have a patient and a veterinarian would ask too many questions. He needed something at that point that neither could provide.

Forensic pathology on what killed the unfortunate beast.

Ten minutes later, they pulled into the unassuming Harrison county morgue offices. It looked more like an outdated DMV building than a receiving area for those that died under mysterious circumstances.

A pair of older men who had shared the gruesome duties of autopsy and determination of death for the last twenty-five years met them in the freshly painted lot. They each took one corner of the tarp on which the dog was laid, the two coroners remarking on the rigid state and emaciated look of the animal. "How long has he been dead?"

Hoping to avoid any embarrassing questions in front of the bartender, Jacobs remarked, "I was hoping you could tell us!" For the next half-hour, Roth and Collier filled in the pair on what they knew of the manner of the dog's disappearance and how they found it. Beyond that, the deputy was afforded little opportunity to explain his concerns in private. They were concerned as he asked them to pay close attention to the state of the blood and organs of the Rottweiller, although with one notable exception the external wounds were hardly invasive, in their estimation. One of them was named Klein, the other Oscarson. In his hurry to usher Blake out of the morgue, which smelled of formaldehyde, Jacobs wasn't sure which coroner was which.

Jacobs requested that a full report be made ready by the morning, as he authorized the necessary work in the absence of Sheriff Crawley. They were not used to taking orders from the sheriff's office, but understood by the strained plea in his expression that time was of the essence. Whatever killed this animal, it probably wasn't expected to be the last. The town of Jefferson and the surrounding areas had an unknown predator on their hands.

Reluctantly, they agreed to his demand as Roth thanked them, pushing Blake Collier out before him. As a final favor, he had the Third Round owner follow him back to the station, where the Mexican's truck was impounded in the back lot. The deputy promised to do all he could to resolve what caused the Rottweiller's death as the patrol car pulled into the parking lot of the bar and let out the bartender.

It was by now mid-afternoon, and Jacobs was in a hurry to get back to Ramirez to find out more about the Chupacabra. Like so many others, he had heard something about the strange creature, or at least the impact on the people of Puerto Rico during the mid-1990s.

But that had all settled down, hadn't it?

Roth parked the squad car next to one of only two others in the fleet belonging to the Jefferson sheriff's department. He stepped around a bright red Moped as he made his way up to the tinted glass door with bronzed lettering. Pulling the handle with only a single backwards glance to the scooter with the wire basket on the back, he called inside to ask who it belonged to when a knot seized at the pit of his stomach.

Calvin Smootz!

Instead of the sobering migrant worker he left in the care and custody of Deputy Bill James, the rotund and unshaven town drunk was now trying fitfully to get to sleep, as Jacobs loudly demanded an explanation from his partner.

"Well, it's like this. You said to keep an eye on Ramirez, book him for disorderly conduct and fine him $3000.00 for public intoxication. Problem is, somebody came in and made bail for him. They haven't been gone twenty minutes now. I helped him on with his boots and this newspaperman from 'The Jefferson Observer' drove off with him."

"Let me guess. Jeremy Borjon."

"Yeah, that's the guy. Said something about protecting his source's first amendment rights." Jacobs was about to get infuriated, but both men quieted when an exasperated Calvin Smootz, his hair askew and disheveled, raised himself out of his stupor long enough to demand that the pair be quiet so that he could get some shuteye. He was out again before he hit the pillow.

No sense in appealing to the editor's sense of justice or threaten him with censure. Roth Jacobs had the uneasy feeling that a special edition of 'The Jefferson Observer' would hit the convenience stores and front porches of the east Texas town by morning, costing him whatever advantage or head start he had in finding out what was responsible for the bizarre mutilations.

He was right.

### THE AUTOPSY

Wednesday morning fell on Jefferson, Texas like the last day on earth. From the half-deserted Waffle House and independent diners up and down Main Street, to the unexpected three-page edition of 'The Observer' that lay like an abandoned child on so many doorsteps, the world would never be the same. Above the fold on the first page, facing up on the counters and door mats, sleepy-eyed citizens of the tiny community read the same headline with growing alarm:

EXTRATERRESTRIAL CATTLE MUTILATION: POLICE BAFFLED

Although it was far less of a surprise than an annoyance to the Sheriff's department, Bill James knew without bringing it to Roth's attention just what would be in the story. Jacobs already seemed to be nursing as much of a headache as Calvin Smootz, who was freshening up to dive back into the Third Round as soon as it opened.

"You know about this?" James asked sheepishly.

"Yeah. I know," the half-Cajun deputy replied.

"So, what are we gonna do about it?"

"We? Nothing. You are going to use an old trick we applied back when I was on the French Quarter patrol in N'awlins. It's called 'plausible deniability'."

"Me? I don't know anything about this situation. What am I supposed to tell these people when they call or storm into the office demanding what we know? I'd have to plead ignorance!"

"Exactly. I need you to hold out for as long as you can. In fact, I wouldn't even read that trash Borjon threw together. It would only make them think he was right about whatever he got by nagging Sykes and helping out Jorge Ramirez." Roth Jacobs drew back his jet-black hair and fitted his tan Stetson hat to his head.

"Wait a minute. You can't just leave me here, deputy. Where are you going?"

"County Coroner's office. I've got to get some answers."

Bill rolled the paper and tucked it under his arm. "What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"

Roth sighed, stopped at the door to let Smootz out and turned back to his partner.

"Damage control, Bill. Just keep them at bay until I get back. Alright?"

Deputy James would have none of it. "Well, I think somebody's got a lot of explaining to do and it ain't me. I think I'd better give Sheriff Crawley a call. He ought to know what's been going on while he's been gone."

"Do what you've got to do. I'm not going to try and stop you. I do think, however, that he wouldn't be happy with you asking him to come back because of a mutilated bull, a dead dog and a midweek edition of the town paper. You know him much better than I do. Gerald doesn't seem like the type that appreciates panic over by the numbers police work. No one's going to panic until you do. Understand?"

The man with two first names nodded and turned toward the bathroom to read, with the rolled up newspaper tucked under his arm.

"Good," Jacobs murmured under his breath as he closed the front door behind him. With the story breaking the deadline he thought he had, the next impending disaster he had to ward off was the return of the sheriff without at least a mundane explanation to the mystery of the two seemingly unrelated animal deaths.

Five minutes later, a muffled voice echoed from within the men's room. "Dog? What's this about a dead dog? There ain't a mention of anything but a killed Brahma bull out at Caddo Lake in here. Jacobs!"

Although the trip across town took less than five minutes, even taking back roads and residential streets to avoid any of the curious or demanding, Roth still got confused, angry or distraught looks from townsfolk, who would have normally waved to the passing deputy. Many had gone back into their homes and businesses, locking their doors and pulling down the shades. It was strangely quiet, for a Wednesday morning.

When Roth pulled off the asphalt two lane leaving Jefferson to the western outskirts, Emil Oscarson was already waiting for him in the parking lot of the county coroner's office. From the bedraggled look of the elderly man, he had probably remained much of the night to perform an autopsy on the Rottweiller.

"You found something?" The deputy asked hopefully as the forensic pathologist waited just outside the squad car door.

"Several somethings, in fact," Oscarson said with an equal measure of confusion and excitement. "David Klein is still inside finishing up an examination of the traumatized tissue surrounding the wound. Very curious, but not the most compelling evidence we've gathered. Please, step inside, won't you?"

Jacobs wasn't sure of their nationality, other than both appeared to be of Scandinavian origin. Lifelong friends, no doubt, probably coming to this country together at least a quarter century ago to settle, for whatever reason, into a life of quiet solitude in east Texas.

To each his own.

"We are still trying to determine how the killing was accomplished. We know now pretty much what was done, but we're still struggling to find out how, if you take my meaning. Yes?"

"Yes," the deputy responded absently as they made their way through the sea foam green halls of the less than antiseptic county office. Since their work was with the dead and the untimely demise normally attributed to accident or premeditation, there was not the hospital level care taken to control the spread of contagion. Biohazard was enough, as regulated by the state of Texas.

They walked past row upon row of yard square doors inset against steel bulkheads containing their latest charges. It unnerved Jacobs to guess what each contained, even after all these years of police work. He kept his eyes forward to a pair of rubber edged swinging doors at the end of the short hall, beside which was a visiting civil servant, dutifully recording death certificates and filing them like so many paper tombstones. An effigy of science attesting to their death rather than a eulogy of a life however spent.

"Tell me you have something for me, boys. I'm running out of time here," the deputy said as he came upon the shining table on which lay the remains of Champ. He stood on one side with Oscarson while Klein stood on the other, beside a tray of used instruments. They had done their grisly deed, the evidence up to the elbows of the latex gloves encasing David's hands, which even now held a serrated tool curved in a wicked, crescent shape.

The Rottweiller was laid open, the abdomen gutted like a side of beef prepared for market. Roth looked at the adjoining receptacles at either end of the table. They were not only cleaned. They were empty.

"Looking for something? Klein asked, casting a knowing glance to his nodding partner before returning his gaze to the deputy.

Roth had no time for games. "You know damn well I am. Where are his organs?"

"That's just it," Oscarson replied for his associate. "There aren't any. This poor animal was robbed of his vital organs from his heart, lungs, lower intestines and everything in between. They weren't ravaged, at least not as far as we can tell. Everything was done with such precision and so quickly that only sheer brutality could account for how completely this dog was eviscerated."

"Excuse me. Eviscerated?"

Knowing he understood the term and wanted a more detailed explanation, Klein lay down his implements of dissection and took up a pose of lecture. "There was no other wound, deputy, other than the one here on the neck. As you can see, it is less than three inches in circumference. It is round, which we consider significant. From the trauma to the opening, we surmised that there had to have been an initial bite to penetrate the neck for the purposes of draining the blood."

Without pausing, Oscarson took up the dissertation by pulling down the magnified lamp to show a close up of the area at the base of the neck. "Although there was no other wound we could find, there were, among the lacerations on the side of the neck toward the base of the skull and the collarbone, puncture marks we supposed were intended to hold the mouth in place while the assailant fed."

"But, what you're telling me is that it wasn't only after the blood?"

"Precisely, Deputy Jacobs. Outwardly, the flesh is for the most part undisturbed. Inwardly, the residue, what little there is, tells us that the respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems were literally dissolved, scrambled and taken out, by whatever means, through this opening in the throat."

Roth examined the wound and found, five inches of each side at perpendicular angles, the slight crease of puncture marks, just as the coroners described. The edges of the hole were pressed outward; as if whatever made them had entered in through this point, but had expanded to allow for whatever it brought out of the body of the dog.

"How is this possible? What you're saying is that something flexible was inserted to travel down Champ's gullet, then was made rigid enough to swizzle the innards into a liquid and consumed. Am I right so far?"

"Remarkably so, deputy," Klein replied. "Think of the spider."

"Also the mosquito," Oscarson countered.

"Quite so, my esteemed colleague. I forgot to mention the female anopheles. Thank you."

Roth was getting tired of the continental decorum between the two coroners and said as much. In response, Klein picked up a forceps and drew apart the folds of the wound while his partner donned a pair of surgical gloves and, by hand, separated the even cut down the Rottweiller's torso. Drawing the mirror downward to the belly of the dog after a closer examination of the neck, Roth Jacobs was surprised to learn that, although the two areas were unscarred, they were hardly clean.

He hadn't noticed a corrosion initially around the opening of the wound. In the case of the neck, it would have been impossible to tell without penetrating the opening to look at the interior tissue. The inner wall of the abdomen gave a clearer picture of just what the animal, still alive at the time, had been subjected, to presumably by the creature Ramirez described.

"The musculature has been scraped clean, leaving nothing of the connecting tissues of any vital organ," Oscarson said as he held open the dissection for the deputy's closer examination. "It is our estimation that, whatever did this to your friend's dog, first injected high levels of seratonin to subdue the animal at the base of the skull and directly into the bloodstream at the jugular venous distention. Poor beast had little idea what was happening to him after that."

That would explain how the was bull dropped without a fight, or even this potentially vicious breed of dog.

"Seratonin? Then you're telling me this thing produces it for injection, like a snake would venom?"

"It would seem so. I'm not saying that it produces seratonin, but like melatonin and certain neurotoxin and hallucinogenic drugs, it causes the subject to manufacture massive amounts of additional seratonin in a very short time. The purpose again would be to subdue the animal bitten by creating in it either a euphoric or catatonic state. We can only hope the poor beast was sufficiently anesthetized not to have suffered much."

Roth nodded as he shook off the sensation these men at least considered whatever committed this act to be somehow merciful to its victims. "Can you get me a work up of the composition of this enzyme, amino acid or whatever you call it? I want to know what is in its spit right up to the DNA, if you can get it for me."

"Already on its way, but I'm afraid it will take a few days. We have connections in Austin with the University of Texas. I wouldn't get my hopes up, though," Oscarson cautioned. "If this creature is as strange as we all agree it may be, a match will not be forthcoming soon, if at all. Besides, technically it is a venom. As for its 'spit', we have already discovered its composition."

Roth looked to Klein and back to Emil. They were smiling broadly at one another and their collective ingenuity. With a shrug and a hand gesture, David allowed Oscarson to do the honors in continuing their earlier discussion. "It is as we described with the spider and the mosquito. A common variety spider will bite to inject its poison into its prey. It initially induces a catatonic state, which subdues and eventually paralyzes its victim."

"This allows the spider time to drag the victim back to its lair, where the poison will cause necrosis and eventually liquefy the internal organs for easier digestion. This creature, whatever it may be, can perform the same function on a much larger scale in much less time. It is far more acidic, at ten times the level capable of the human stomach. It is this same acid formation that emulates the chemical changes in muscle tissue, resulting in the rapid onset of rigor mortis you discovered."

Roth was still not satisfied. "Even so, the liquefaction process should still take time. Now, you said that all the major abdominal organ systems were missing. I've got a feeling that this is where we jump from the spider to the mosquito. Am I right?"

"Yes, more than you realize," Klein agreed. "Remember how we said the wound was initially a perfectly round but smaller opening which later became stretched after the creature began to feed? We believe, as the teeth or fangs latched on to its victim with the same tenacity as claws to maintain its grip, that a proboscis, like that on a mosquito, was inserted into the body cavity, with one notable difference."

Roth felt knots tighten in his stomach. Here it comes.

"We believe that whatever did this has an extraordinarily long 'tongue', for lack of a better term. We feel it connects directly to the stomach and can reach to a length sufficient to penetrate a victim up to at nearly its body size. It would have to be in order to have scraped the abdominal lining as it did. It is also by this method, again we suppose, that acidity was released into the body of this dog and was then acted upon by a whipping motion sufficient to dislodge and liquefy the organs. In essence, the digestive process began outside of the creature."

"So the tongue acts like a mosquito's proboscis but can be made flexible with a harder exterior to penetrate the body cavity. It might even be barbed, if the scrapes on the abdominal lining are any indication. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment," Oscarson replied, a sentiment echoed by David Klein.

Jacobs turned and headed for the exit. He had to get to work. Stopping only momentarily, he remembered both his manners and his duty. "Oh, great work. By the way, there's a bull I need you to take a look at out at the Syke's place on 134 just this side of Caddo Lake. He may have moved it already into cold storage. Call the office for his telephone number and directions. Same scenario. Let me know when you get a response to your samples from the university. Thanks again, both of you!"

Roth trotted along the hallway past the morgue until he reached the outer doors. Glad to breathe the clean air again, he pushed his way outside just in time to see Jeremy Borjon's late model sedan with the press tag hanging from the lowered passenger side visor. The 'Jefferson Observer' publisher pulled alongside the brown and gold patrol car, just near enough to keep the impatient deputy from being able to open his door.

"What do you want, Borjon? You seem to be dogging my every step, these days."

"Just information, deputy. Yours and mine. Look, I already know you're not too happy with me for running the story on your Chupacabra, but I have a pretty sizeable Hispanic readership, and everyone around here is interested in what affects the cattle trade. Sykes losing his prize Brahma bull is big news."

"So where do I come in? You've already got my only lead on this thing."

"Ramirez?" Jeremy laughed. "I paid the fine on his truck this morning, got it out of the impound. He's probably already halfway back to Dallas on his way to Mexico even as we speak."

"You did what?" Jacobs gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes at the puny editor.

"Easy there, deputy. Don't blow a gasket. I got information for you, right here." Borjon passed him an artist's rendition of the creature, along with the description he got from the migrant worker. Roth was relieved that he got something out of the deal, but preferred to have asked the questions himself.

"So, what do you want from me?" Jacobs asked, fearing the worst.

"An exclusive. I pass along what I learn in exchange for what you find out. Deal?"

Jacobs thought the arrangement was definitely one-sided, but what choice did he have? It was better to have the investigation published to keep the public informed than misinformation and outright sensationalism just to sell papers. The downside, if he refused, was spinning the acceptable white lie out of the unacceptable truth.

"Deal," Jacobs said reluctantly. There was no time to work out any details and he didn't want to explain his presence at the county coroner's office. He was relieved but confused when he heard a call come in from his squad car and the publisher's vehicle at the same time.

"Police scanner," Borjon said sheepishly. The Jefferson deputy shook his head and reached in for his car mike.

"Jacobs here. Go ahead, Bill."

"Roth? Roth, hold on a second." The sound of people yelling to be heard over one another came to a sudden halt as James yelled at them to be quiet. "That's better. Now, form a single file line or get out. I got business here, urgent business!"

The deputy back at the office returned his attentions to Jacobs. Roth made Borjon turn off his scanner so that he didn't hear his own delayed voice in the conversation. "Roth, I don't know how to tell you this, especially with all these people here."

Jacobs instructed the junior deputy to step into Sheriff Crawley's office and shut the door before continuing. He listened as the door closed and the chair was scooted up to the only other radio in the sheriff's department.

"The details are kind of sketchy, but I received a couple of calls back to back. I didn't know what to make of them. One was an animal control report but the other, well; it was a hit and run. The mother and little girl didn't stop after they hit a big-eyed something that lurched out on the road. It was down by Sutter's Crossing, three miles south of town on 17."

Roth was perplexed but intrigued. "What about the animal report, was it another mutilation?"

"No," James replied. A couple of boys stumbled on a nest of some kind, with a big lizard sleeping in it. It smelled to high heaven and it hissed at them. When they grabbed some rocks and threw at it, the thing jumped up and hopped away. Right onto the highway at 17. As far as I know, it's still there."

"I'm on it!" Jacobs replied, signing off before Bill could ask for any more advice.

### THE CAPTURE

Try as he might, Jacobs had no luck shaking the 'Observer' publisher en route to the scene of the Chupacabra sighting and accident. He could only assume that the two were related, from the description and artist's rendering Borjon supplied. Roth asked to borrow it, and Jeremy reluctantly agreed, under the conditions of their arrangement. How far did it actually go, and where would the sheriff's department draw the line on access?

It all depended on how beneficial or detrimental a specific report might be to the case.

Who was he kidding? With the local magistrate in the paper's back pocket, the only hope he had was outrunning or hiding whatever he found from the persistent reporter. Between the agreement to share information and the blasted scanner in the late model sedan in hot pursuit, it would be hard to do either.

Highway 17 ran southwest of town into open country. Because it did not lead to a destination of any consequence, it was cracked in places with intermittent potholes that the deputy seemed incapable or uninterested in avoiding. If this thing was still alive, it would flee. If it was dead, the last thing Jacobs wanted was to have a small crowd of people gathered around it. Sirens blaring, he attracted more attention than he wanted, anyway. Borjon used it like a police escort as he followed after.

Fortunately, once he was out of town and bumping along the stretch of two-lane highway fallen into disrepair, there was no need to alarm motorists or bring the owners of the few houses that lined the road onto their porches. He scanned the road ahead and saw a mother clutching her daughter, standing behind a Ford station wagon with oxidized blue paint and rusted chrome.

He was waved over unnecessarily by the girl's mother, who looked distraught and anxious as the nine-year-old child refused to loosen her grip about the woman's waist. Roth pulled onto the narrow shoulder of the road, with Jeremy Borjon following close behind. The deputy got out, donned his hat and club for good measure and approached the two females.

"Everyone all right, here?" He asked, casting his eyes along the asphalt road from the twenty-yard skid to where the car rested at the edge of a draw. Had they not managed to stop, mother and daughter could have been seriously hurt. He approached them with the reporter close behind. Jacobs spun on his heel and stood looking down at the smaller Borjon.

"I need a few minutes with these two. Wait here and I'll let you know when or if you can speak to them. Okay?"

Jeremy nodded uncertainly, about to invoke the terms of their shaky alliance, but thought better of it. He realized and hoped Roth didn't that, although he couldn't be stopped from printing what he wished, the townsfolk would not tolerate irresponsibility if he was to unnecessarily upset the family. He knew the little girl as Jessica Sommers, a local pageant staple and her mother, Naomi. Her husband, as he recalled, was an insurance salesman. Borjon could always ask for an interview later at their home.

Jacobs saw that the Sommers were shaken, but unharmed. The mother had a bruise on her forearm where she had rested her elbow on the window ledge. Jessica had been buckled in the back seat and was shaken, but otherwise unharmed. They had apparently not yet contacted Mr. Sommers, as prevalent as cell telephones were in most other parts of the country. The husband kept the only one in the family for use in his business.

"Mrs. Sommers, Naomi, can you tell me what happened?" Jacobs asked, consolingly.

The thirty-four year old nodded, stifling tears for the sake of her daughter.

"We'd just dropped Bud off at work and were heading home. Jessica is going to a birthday party later today so we were going home to get her ready. We were just talking, and I looked back in the mirror to ask her what we should get her little friend, when she pointed out over the seat and screamed for me to look out." The former high school cheerleader apologized and fought back her overwhelmed emotions.

Jacobs allowed her a few moments to compose herself before continuing.

"By the time I looked up, all I saw was this hideous face. It was horrible. The nose, mouth and ears were nothing more than tiny specks on its head, but those eyes. They were enormous! I thought it was my tires squealing, but I didn't have time to break until after I hit it and it rolled up and over my windshield. I barely got the car back under control and pulled off the road before I realized it screamed at me."

"I didn't mean to hit it, poor thing. It must have crawled out onto the highway. I thought it was some kind of animal, but before I knew it, it got up on two legs, hissed at us and limped onto the far side of the road, through those bushes over there."

Jacobs wasn't certain which side it might have come from until he felt himself being watched. It wasn't alien, or even unnerving. With a half turn, he spied a pair of young boys who had been spying on him and now rose up to run. "Wait! Come back here, you two! I just want to ask you some questions!"

It was too late. The youths were already heading back down through the saw grass along a tractor path by the time Roth leaped the ditch. "Jeremy, keep an eye on the Sommers until I get back!" The deputy scarcely saw the fox in the hen house smile cross Borjon's lips as he hurried along the trail. The overgrown dirt track crossed back and forth over itself and he quickly lost them in the undergrowth.

By now, it was almost a game with the children, who squealed with laughter whenever he would draw close or stopped and found them again somewhere off in the distance. The chase would begin again and the boys knew the forest better than he did. After several minutes, he realized that he had crossed several times from three directions at an intersection beside a fallen giant white oak now rotten and full of insects.

Jacobs jumped over the trunk and knelt behind it until he heard the muffled pad of sneakers on the talcum-fine sand. When he heard their labored breathing and wheezing conversation as to whether they had finally lost the deputy, Jacobs hurdled from his hiding place and caught the boys by their skinny shoulders.

"Gotcha!" He yelled as the youths, no more than ten or eleven, screamed in unison.

"We didn't do nothin', deputy. Honest! Please let us go. Our folks will be worried..."

They couldn't have been more than ten years old up close, he decided, either one of them. One was a towhead boy with freckles, the other a black youth with green eyes. Like so many other children in Jefferson, he may not have had their names, but he'd seen these two often enough, playing together in the park near Fellowship Hall.

"Worried about what?" Jacobs pressed, crossing his arms and releasing the boys. He still kept a close eye to be sure that they wouldn't bolt on him. No, he supposed, these two would be loyal to one another. They knew as well as he did that if the slower of the two was caught again, it wouldn't do the one that got away any good, no matter how far he ran. That boy would still have to go home, and his folks would be waiting.

"You two saw something back there in the grass, didn't you?"

Silence. They looked from one to the other as if they'd made a solemn vow not to talk about it.

They weren't going anywhere and neither was this tall deputy until he had some answers.

Finally, the black kid spoke. "I'm Tyrone Davis. This here's Able Jenkins."

Able looked up and squinted at Roth, said hello and returned his nervous gaze to his friend.

"Yeah, we saw a big lizard, but that ain't what scared us so bad. We had plenty of rocks and it hopped up and ran away from us, making a terrible squall and stinking to high heaven. We chased it until it got to the highway and Jenkins hit the thing in the leg. It limped out and got hit by Jessica's mom in the station wagon. They could've died and it would have been our fault. You ain't gonna lock us up, are you?"

Finally, Jacobs understood why the boys had run. They were afraid they would be arrested.

"You did good by calling in what you saw." Roth looked around, suddenly puzzled, assuming they had placed the call, if not the mother. How did you call the station?"

"I had ten cent and Tyrone had twenty." Able explained. We went to the gas station a quarter mile that way and told the sheriff's office what happened, about the lizard and the accident. We know the Sommers, but we didn't want them to know it was us that nearly killed them."

"They're going to be fine, boys," Jacobs explained as he rested hands on his aching knees to reach their eye level. "That was a dangerous thing you did out here. That animal you came upon is dangerous. Maybe not to humans, but it's still vicious. What were you doing out here, anyway?"

The pair now reached to their full heights and looked him straight in the eye.

"Me and Tyrone here are cryptozlgists. You know, monster hunters. We saw the paper this morning about the cow mutations and figured that the big bird tracks we've been seeing the last week or so had to belong to the critter. We found a nest last Saturday and didn't think nothing of it. We figured it was probably a buzzard that got old man Syke's bull, but that ain't what we found. Was it, Tyrone?"

Davis shook his head. "It looked like a big iguana, but stunk like it was dead. So, just to be sure, me and Able went back down to the stream at the edge of Sutter's Crossing and got some big shiny river rocks. We'd have got him, too, if they'd been just a little bigger. Anyways, we're real sorry for causing Miz Sommers to come close to dying and all. So if you ain't gonna lock us up, are you goin' to tell our parents?"

Roth stood tall again and looked at them as if contemplating his next move.

"Where do your folks think you are?"

"I'm at his house all day," Able confided.

"And I'm over at his," Tyrone confessed.

Jacobs sighed heavily, adjusted his hat and shifted his heavy belt laden with bullets, nightstick and service revolver. "I'll make you a deal. Help me to figure out what it is you threw at and I'll give you a lift to the corner of your streets. A couple of professional monster hunters like you ought to know if you saw a picture of this thing again, right?"

"Sure!"

"Absolutely!"

"Jacobs!" Borjon's voice echoed over the vacant field at the forest beyond to where Roth stood with the two boys. A car horn blared in staccato succession to get the deputy's attention, but the half-Cajun was lost. He'd gotten himself tangled up as to which of the three paths led to the highway.

"This way!" Tyrone Davis yelled as he struggled to keep up with the taller Jenkins boy. They took the middle course away from the trunk and within two minutes Roth came huffing and puffing up behind them on the far side of the ditch at the shoulder of the asphalt two-lane at 17.

Naomi knelt beside her daughter, who shook uncontrollably as they stared after Jeremy on the far side of the road. He was standing just beyond the narrow draw on the far side of the road, jabbing at the front page above the fold article of his morning edition.

"Stay here!" Jacobs ordered the four bystanders and headed across the otherwise deserted highway. Borjon had one leg turned back as if he felt that he would have to make a quick getaway should the object lying not ten feet from him suddenly leap up and try to escape or worse. Roth caught himself up before he overran the creature the boys pelted with rocks and the mother and daughter struck with their wood-paneled station wagon.

It was the Chupacabra lying there in the tall grass, just as Ramirez had described it to Borjon. To Jacobs, it did look like the devil himself. It was muscular through the thighs and lower legs, but almost frail by comparison throughout the torso. The arms were spindly and drawn close to the body. Both ended in three clawed appendages serving as hands and feet.

The eyes were open, unblinking and black as the abyss. They saw themselves reflected in them with a ruddy curve that did not appear to be perceived by the creature. Naomi Sommers was right as well. The mouth was a slit, the ears and nose only bumps with small indentations and openings. Its body was covered with coarse hairs that failed to cover its grayish green skin, mottled with patches of purple where it showed through clumps of furry quills. A row of what could only be described as spikes ran down the back of its oversized head to its spine and ended at its tailbone.

For all the fear associated with this beast, the Goatsucker was no more than three feet in height. Its stomach was bloated, distended no doubt by its recent feeding. Both men covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs, overwhelmed at the sulfurous smell rising off the creature like rotten eggs. At no time did they see it stir or hear it moan in any way. If it was not dead, it was close.

Jacobs left the publisher to watch the creature while he crossed the street ahead of a tow truck from the garage up the highway where the boys made their call. Good. At least Borjon already took care of the Sommers. Now, he just had to manage to keep the two - what had they called themselves, cryptozlgists - from getting too close to the animal they roused from its nest.

Having no other recourse, Jacobs contacted the pair of Scandinavian coroners and told them of his remarkable find. They were on their way with the county morgue hearse before he could get out the explanation as to why he needed it. Less than fifteen minutes later, with still no movement or sign of life from the creature, Oscarson and Klein pulled onto the scrub grass along the left-hand side of the road.

They were dressed against biohazard in suits with latex gloves reaching up to their elbows, surgical garb, safety goggles and close fitting caps. They looked as bizarre as the animal they maneuvered the gurney across the ditch to retrieve.

They argued momentarily in Swedish as to who was to take the beast by the shoulders to get it up on the stretcher. Neither one relished the idea of coming in proximity with the head, which showed within the jagged teeth, at the crease of its mouth, to have a potentially nasty bite. Then, there was that tongue-like proboscis. They had all three read the autopsy report, and knew what the Chupacabra could do to a human, if properly motivated.

Klein cried out and let go of his end when the head lolled back and the tongue unrolled nearly two feet over his arm with at least another foot still in the lipless mouth lined with fangs. The canines were particularly large, but the proboscis that draped between them was the most astounding. It was a barbed muscle within an interlocking exoskeleton, unlike anything found among mammals or reptiles on earth.

When there was no further reaction to having dropped the Goatsucker, David Klein hesitantly picked up the animal by the forearms and laid it on the stretcher, where they zipped it in a black nylon body bag and lashed down the limbs with cinched restraining straps. The rest of the procedure to extricate the Chupacabra went smoothly enough. The coroners were soon on their way back to the morgue and the deputy filed an accident report for Naomi's husband to claim against. Then, the truck towed the Ford away for repairs.

As far as anyone was to be told, they'd simply hit an unknown animal.

Jacobs made good on his promise to give the two young boys a lift, but made them keep their promise about not telling anyone where they'd been that morning. If they acted in any manner unbefitting a pair of professional monster hunters, they'd be locked up for causing the accident with lying to their parents thrown in for good measure. It was a lie, but a pretty darn convincing one.

It had to be to quell the natural curiosity of a pair of young boys.

The day ended routinely enough. The coroners locked the animal in an empty autopsy room for quarantine to keep the body cool until they decided that there was no risk of contamination. Borjon was made to promise that he would not incite panic by stating that the creature had been caught. It was the opinion of the editor of the 'Jefferson Observer' that if anything, the local population would rest easier knowing they had nothing to fear from the Chupacabra.

"Yeah," Roth replied in a lull in the conversation over the phone that afternoon, "just like no one would have panicked over the capture of a space ship near Roswell, New Mexico back in 1947." Although he himself didn't believe in aliens or flying saucers, Jacob's grandfather had told him stories of his days after WWII, when he missed most of the action overseas and spent most of the aftermath in Roswell as a corpsman working security as an MP.

His grandfather told him he had been one of those called out to pick up every bit of debris surrounding the crash site of the UFO. Roth considered it a story and nothing more. After all, he reasoned, no one really believed in life on other planets anymore. Did they? As far as he was concerned after the events of the past two days, life had gotten pretty strange on earth without involving little green men.

The next morning, Roth decided to get a jump on the work that had backed up on his desk as a result of the investigation into the mutilations. It would still be another day or two before the pathologists got back the results of the analysis by Oscarson's contact at the University of Texas in Austin. That was the first reason that he was surprised to hear from Emil's colleague David Klein so early that morning. The second was even greater cause for alarm.

"Deputy Jacobs, you must get down here right away. We require your presence immediately!"

"What is it, David?" Roth tried to get a coherent word in edgewise amidst an incessant banging.

"What's all that racket? Can you cut it out long enough for me to hear you?"

Klein was literally screaming in the phone now.

"That's just it, deputy. We can't. We haven't touched the creature. It's revived, clawed its way out of the straps and the body bag. It's the Chupacabra throwing itself against the steel frame door of the morgue and I don't know how much longer it will hold. Please, hurry!"

### ALLIES

"I'll be right there!" Jacobs called out into the phone even as he was hanging it up. Although it was no longer up to his ear, he could still hear the cries of the frightened coroners and the resounding clangs of the Chupacabra as it threw itself against the interior of the steel framed door as it sought escape. Bill James was not yet in that morning, preferring himself to have the afternoon and evening hours for the most part, so Roth scrawled a quick message on a yellow sticky pad and slapped it down on the rubber ink blotter on the other deputy's desk.

Looking around quickly, the half-Cajun deputy ran into Sheriff Crawley's office to get the combination to the gun cabinet, a heavy safe left over from the days of the old west that was one of the sheriff's prize possessions. Besides, he always said with a grin, it was too damn heavy to move, anyway.

Fortunately, Jefferson, Texas was hardly a high security risk area, so all Jacobs had to do was lift the corner of the desk mat and read the hyphenated sequence of numbers. He crossed the room to where the five foot tall former Wells Fargo monolith stood narrow and immovable, Roth set the dial and called them out to himself under his breath as he worked the numbers into the turns until he heard each pinging echo of tumblers fall.

Following the third, there was an additional drop of locking mechanisms that braced the handle from the inside, allowing him to turn the tapered handle downward with an audible click. Pulling the door open, he saw that he had a choice of weapons ranging from a deer rifle to a double-barreled shotgun. He took one of each with enough shells to wage a range war and, as an afterthought, a preloaded .22 caliber with a CO2 canister to propel feathered tranquilizer darts. Two others were housed in a plastic case with a yellow seal warning that the projectiles within were not intended for small animals or humans.

"No problem there," Jacobs muttered, as he wrapped the guns in his arms and shoved the cabinet closed with his shoulder. He shifted the rifles down at an angle in his left arm and tucked the bullets, shells and darts under his elbow against his right side. He moved as quickly as he could to the inner door, threw it open and fumbled to pulled it closed as the outer was suddenly opened behind him. Expecting to push against the resistance of the glass-paned aluminum outer door, he had already tangled legs and fallen to the sidewalk atop a smaller figure that expelled all its breath with the dual impact of the concrete and the 180-pound deputy.

Jacobs had no time to waste in his hurry to get to the county morgue before he added 'cause of death' to his list of improprieties in the investigation of the Goatsucker. He rolled off of the person who had cushioned his fall, even as the deputy began to scold his unseen benefactor for not watching where he was going. He turned up on one elbow as he got to one knee and looked down on the face and feline body of a young black woman, possibly black Creole. It generally depicted a south Louisiana native wholly or primarily of Afro-Caribbean ancestry, usually of French-speaking heritage. Although a distinct ethnic group, black Creoles exerted a profound influence on Cajun culture, and vice versa.

Her hair was not kinky, but soft and framed a beautiful face that looked up at him with green eyes.

There was nothing soft and gentle in her voice as she broke the deputy's reverie by asking him if he would please get off of her. "Huh? Oh, sorry! My apologies, Mrs..." Jacobs fumbled with the guns as he struggled to rise and offered his hand to help the young woman up from the sidewalk in front of the Sheriff's office.

"Davis," she said with a slight Caribbean accent, "and it's Miss. I'm not married."

"I'm sorry," Roth apologized as he gathered his weapons back under him and checked his watch.

He really didn't have time for this.

"I'm not," she confessed. "Odessa," she said as she extended her hand.

"What?" Jacobs asked distractedly as he ignored the proffered hand and headed for his squad car.

"My name, it's Odessa Davis. I'm here visiting my aunt from Puerto Rico. I'd like to talk to you."

"No time," the deputy called back over his shoulder. I'm very busy right now. Miss Davis."

Roth leaned the arsenal against the bumper of the Plymouth squad car and tugged at the keys at his belt on a retractable loop secured by a tether of thin wire. Twice he cursed himself; once for letting go when his sweaty palms lost their grip on the oversized bob and the whole phalanx slapped against his hip. The other was when the woman called out to him still brushing herself off from the spill to the sidewalk.

"Where are you going with all that firepower? Is this about the El Chupacabra you captured?"

The Jefferson deputy slammed the trunk of the patrol car down with the guns safely lodged inside and rested his palms against the lid as he carefully contemplated his next question. "Now, just how do you know about that?"

Odessa brushed her palms together and walked toward him with a lopsided grin. "I thought that would get your attention. She looked at the trunk again before bringing her vivid green eyes up to meet the harried blue of his own.

Those eyes, he thought, searching his overworked imagination to separate his recent memories from his waking nightmares, doubts and fears over the nature and intent of the bizarre creature.

"I've seen them before."

"Yes, you have," Davis explained, Jacobs realizing only too late that he had made his final comment aloud. "Now, you can either stick around long enough to figure out where or let me ride along with you and explain on your way to deal with the Goatsucker. It's your choice, but you're out of time."

The deputy rounded the brown and gold squad car as he vigorously shook his head.

"No way, Miss Davis. It's much too dangerous. We don't even know what we're up against."

"But I do. I know much more about this creature than you do," the black woman countered.

"No deal," Jacobs said after a moment's hesitation. He turned over the ignition.

The deputy backed the car out of the graveled parking space filling the pothole when a final plea reached his ears. "Then perhaps you can learn what I know from that newspaper editor. What's his name, Borjon? Of course by then, it will be too late for any of that knowledge to do you any good now, won't it?"

Roth took his foot and applied it as quickly and as heavily from the gas pedal to the brake and rested his head against his knitted fingers atop the steering wheel. This was getting ridiculous. Was he the only one besides Bill James, who knew nothing of the whereabouts or habits of the Chupacabra? Migrant workers, cattlemen, bartenders, drunks, housewives and even children were feeding information to that damn Jeremy Borjon. Well, this was one source that would stay in protective custody until this investigation ran its course.

The deputy pulled the car back into the parking space and reached over to unlock and push open the passenger side door. "Get in," he said with all the enthusiasm of a trapped taxpayer during an IRS audit. Odessa Davis climbed in with a wild look in her eyes and a gloating smile running from ear to ear.

"So, where are we going?" She asked as the deputy pulled the strap of the seat belt across her chest to lock her into place.

"Just hang on," Jacobs cautioned as he whipped the car back out of the lot and onto the streets of Jefferson. He had not used the radio on purpose to contact Bill James of the incident at the county coroner's office and drove reasonably within the five-mile range over the town-wide 25-mile an hour speed limit. There was no need to rouse the watchful suspicions of The Jefferson Observer and its publisher.

The impatience and sense of urgency instead was reflected in the eyes and mannerisms of the deputy. He thought about the last of the mental list he had made of the witnesses and experts who had either come in contact with or had knowledge about the strange reptilian kangaroo that was even now trying to escape the confines of the local morgue.

The children, those kids he chased through the woods out on 17. What were their names again? Oh yeah, that's right. The freckle-faced blonde was Abel Jenkins. The black kid with the strange green eyes was Tyrone Davis. Better remember them for his report, if he ever gets a chance to complete it or the investigation ever comes to an end. It seemed as if this death of a bull had turned the world he knew upside down. Odessa Davis had asked to borrow his mirror long enough to check her make up and put her hair in place, when the realization hit him and he pulled suddenly to the shoulder of the road on the way out of town.

Those same green eyes he saw in the Davis Boy now appraised him curiously in the mirror.

"Why are we stopping?" She asked, then nodded with a smile. "Took you long enough to figure it out, deputy. My brother Tyrone lives with my aunt Ninevah. After our parents died under mysterious circumstances in Trinidad-Tobago, the five of us were sent to live with relatives. Tyrone was just a baby, and my father's sister thought he would have the chance for a better life in the U.S. She never married, which explains why my aunt has a son with my last name."

"Sounds reasonable enough. So Tyrone spilled the beans about what happened to him yesterday at Sutter's Crossing. That still doesn't make you an expert on the Chupacabra. That comment bought you a ride out with me to where they took it. If you can't give me more incentive than a boy's wild story about hunting monsters and finding one in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to let you off right here, Borjon or no Borjon."

"Okay, deputy. Don't go getting your shorts in a twist." Odessa drew the nail of her painted index finger in toward the edges of her full lips before giving the deputy sheriff back his rear view mirror. She composed herself, her verdant eyes searching for a place to begin.

"Ever hear of SETI?" When Roth indicated he hadn't, with a hesitant shrug of his shoulders and reluctant shake of his head to indicate his ignorance, Odessa gave him a quick explanation. "SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and represents the project to monitor radio signals from outer space in the hopes of detecting life elsewhere in the universe. Back in 1960, a young astronomer named Frank Drake got the bright idea of using an 85-foot West Virginia antennae to detect possible microwave radio emissions coming from the direction of a pair of Sun-like stars."

"It attracted the attention of the astronomical community of the day, particularly the Russians. The Soviet Union dominated SETI throughout the decade. Then in 1970, NASA, fresh off the Apollo moon landing, commissioned a comprehensive study to provide a detailed analysis of the science and technology called Project Cyclops that has been the foundation of SETI to this day."

"In 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the New World, the observations began with fanfare after more than a decade of study and preliminary research. They followed the strategy of the JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in a Sky Survey that was a targeted sweep of more than a thousand Suns. Unimpressed with the initial findings less than a year later, Congress terminated funding. SETI has struggled under private funding, ever since."

Jacobs checked his watch. Time's up, he thought. Still, he was intrigued and needed help. "What about Puerto Rico? Does this have something to do with the large dish there?"

Odessa, realizing she had burned her 30-second chance with a background of SETI, continued on hurriedly. "As I said, I was raised in Trinidad-Tobago, but I always loved to lay on the beach at night and look up at the stars. I wondered what could live out there. My wonder turned to fear after reports began to surface locally about strange creatures that bit the necks of farm animals to draw out their blood and liquefied organs. Luckily, I escaped the island fate that befell so many others when I received a scholarship in radio astronomy from Georgetown University in Washington D.C."

"It was not long after that my parents died and my family went their separate ways. After graduation, I helped to provide for my little brother by signing on with SETI's Project Phoenix. I accepted an assignment to Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It is the site of a 1000-foot reflector dish set in a mountaintop sinkhole, 450-feet beneath the structure supporting the dome. It was my job to monitor the radio telescope at night, to watch the stars just as I had as a child."

"All was going well during the mid-1990's when I began to hear reports from the villagers of strange attacks on cattle and farm animals, such as we had back home. Because I am Creole, the locals did not hesitate to share their fears and concerns with me, and I began to investigate the problem on my own. I felt that my search above in the heavens and on the earth below were one and the same. Unfortunately, my superiors did not share either my concerns or beliefs in the matter."

"My investigations brought me closer and closer to an unnamed military research facility in the vicinity of El Campo, where some of the first and most persistent reports have circulated for almost 50 years. There are 25 bases in Puerto Rico, and this was obviously one of the oldest. They are all scheduled to close in the next decade, but not this one. Why? I couldn't understand the secrecy or the extra security, as I was repeatedly turned back by the military police. Not long after, I was followed in unmarked cars, my phone was tapped and my apartment burglarized."

"I didn't do anything wrong, and yet it seemed the project administrator, who terminated my contract, did so under pressure. He could give no reason without revealing what he should not know about my extra-curricular activities. All he would say is that my services were no longer required and that budget cutbacks made it necessary to downsize my position, among others."

"When I took what few belongings I had out from my office in a box, I was called into a room where I was debriefed by men in black with crew cuts and uncomfortable in a suit, as if out of uniform. I was told to forget all I found out on the island about certain military activities and was given a ticket stateside, with an armed escort, to the docks. That was three weeks ago. I had nowhere else to go, so I visited with my aunt Ninevah and my brother. I saw the newspaper report and when Tyrone came back with his own story to tell, I realized I had to find the common thread to both and offer my services."

"Me?" Jacobs inquired.

"You," Davis said with a nodding incline toward the deputy sheriff.

"Officer Roth, you are in more danger than from just El Chupacabra. If I know about what you have captured, you can be sure an element of our own government will soon come after it. They will not let anyone stand in their way."

Odessa leaned back. Content she had at least given her side of the story.

"So, can I stay?" She asked, not daring to return his disbelieving gaze.

"Like I said before," he said as he cinched the shoulder strap tightly between her breasts.

"Hang on!" Her head was thrown back as the deputy spun gravel and caught the two lane black top with the late model Plymouth. Roth hit the siren and headed west beyond Jefferson to where he would hopefully find the two coroners alive and the embattled steel door restraining the Chupacabra intact.

### THE SHOWDOWN

Jacobs and Davis pulled into the blacktop parking lot of the Marion County coroner's office ten minutes later. Conveniently located at the West End of town to accommodate the centrality of the small community, Roth wasted no time as he drew his service revolver and ran through the double doors, leaving Odessa behind. The radio astronomer drew pensively out of the patrol car and leaned momentarily against the top of the door. All her life, she had heard the rumors and the whispered stories about the terrible creature that came at night to feed on the cattle and livestock of her island home.

It had been the reason she was forced to leave the Phoenix Project at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. There was no doubt about that. The only question that remained was whether she would commit herself now to ending the pursuit of a monster that began when she was a child. The young black woman bit at her lower lip and the worry drew her arched brows together. If not for her, then she would see this thing through to the end for Tyrone and Aunt Ninevah. She had to be sure it was either real or dead.

"Wait for me, deputy!" Odessa rounded the car door and shoved it closed, leaving the driver's side left hurriedly open. She crossed the small parking lot, pulled open the door and could hear the banging, clawing and yowling even before she had gone through the second pair of double doors to the foyer.

The voices, muffled as she entered the building, were clearer now. She heard Roth's strident baritone with Cajun inflections mingle with that of one, no two, foreign nationals. Norwegian, she thought. No, definitely Swedish. She had known enough foreign students when she attended Georgetown University whose parents were diplomats and heads of state who wanted their children to be educated in proximity to American politics.

She ran down the hall calling the name of the sheriff's deputy, until she turned a corner and nearly collided with him standing outside the door of an autopsy room in the morgue. She began to ask if he and the two older men were all right, when she was interrupted by a resounding bang from the inside. It was a dull thud, as if whatever was behind the steel door only knew to throw its body against the metal frame in the futile hope of escape.

Still, Miss Davis jumped back with a small cry and dug her nails into Roth's shoulder as she hid behind him. Jacobs, feeling like anything but a protective hero, shrugged off the painted nails that held her fast to his side. "No time to get squeamish, Odessa. That door's not going to hold this thing forever. It might be paned in steel, but the hinges and threshold are only as strong as the mortar and cinderblock that hold them in place!"

Even as he explained, the deceptive determination and strength of the Chupacabra inside drove it again and again, relentlessly, in an attempt to free itself of the confines within. They could now see the whole structure jump as dust and pellets of concrete rose and fell in response to the progress it was making. The hinge pins, once recessed in the wall, were no longer flush with the sea foam green of the painted cinder block.

It would soon have the entire threshold loosened and thrown down from its foundation.

They had to come up with a solution quickly. There was no time to call in reinforcements, and nothing but Jacob's .38 caliber special stood between the four and the imminent peril that would step across the fallen door in a matter of minutes.

Then, he recalled his arsenal. Leaving the frightened Oscarson and Klein to monitor the slow but inexorable progress, Roth had Odessa follow him back out to the patrol car, the door ajar and the vehicle askew to the freshly painted lines of the parking lot. Throwing open the door to the caged back seat, separated from the front by a mesh net and locks controlled from the front, he gathered the rifles and tranquilizer darts and headed back inside.

By the time he reached the two older pathologists, Jacobs could see from the side of the room that the door jam was now unseated from the threshold. There was not much time now.

"You know how to use one of these?" Roth asked as he unholstered his .38 and handed it to the astronomist. Odessa opened the barrel, checked the rounds, closed it again and spun the bullets in all six chambers before deftly aiming the pistol in the direction of the embattled door.

"Hey, I'm an island girl. Guns and coconuts are second nature to me, mon."

Jacobs glanced sidewise at her and gave her a lopsided grin in response to her nervous wink. He handed the double-barrel shotgun to Klein, apparently an avid hunter, and the 30.06 deer rifle to Oscarson, who appeared less comfortable with guns. "I don't think I can kill this thing," Emil confessed.

"If that Chupacabra in there gets out and heads straight for you with claws flashing and that proboscis darting, I doubt you'll have a problem putting a bullet between its dark eyes. Don't worry, doc. It'll come natural enough when the time comes. I promise."

The deputy's assurance was punctuated by an especially hard thrust of the strange animal against the door from the other side. The powdered debris issued forth from the edges as the door bulged outward noticeably. For the first time, they could see the first traces of the impacts in the door itself. Shapes were beginning to form on the dull metallic surface of the door.

It would be out soon.

Roth kept the tranquilizer dart gun loaded with CO2 cartridges for himself. He had no idea, given the alien nature of the creature, what effect, if any, the anesthetic would have on the Chupacabra. Then again, he was even less certain why he should make any effort whatsoever to subdue the monster. It had easily killed a Brahma bull and a full-grown Rottweiller without noticeable effort and drained them both of bodily fluids and organs. Now, after being hit by a car, it was up and enraged to the point that it could come through a steel door after its captors?

Something distracting tugged once again at the back of the deputy's mind. First, there was the distance between the two attacks and the need to rest after feeding on prey so large. Although apparently capable of deceptive strength and speed, the animal would have had to cover nearly thirty miles and be hungry enough to kill again. What could drive such a creature to such persistent ferocity?

There could only be one explanation.

This Chupacabra had a mate that attacked the Syke's bull, Percy. That would explain the hunger and the wide range of the attacks at approximately the same hour two nights ago. He had no doubt that the nest the boys found was used regularly by the one that now threatened to free itself with an exponential increase in ferocity and a keening whine that they could easily hear now through the cracks in the mortar.

Nest...

"Oh my God!" Jacobs exclaimed as the others turned toward him. They thought it was his reaction to the falling of the first cylindrical pin of the door as it hit the floor with an earsplitting intonation of metal on ceramic tile. Like the amplified ping of a tuning fork to deafening decibels, it was soon joined by a second. Two remained, one holding only at a bent angle outward toward them as it slipped more with each ram of the Chupacabra from the other side.

Silence.

The high-pitched yowling dropped to a pained moan over the course of several minutes. There were no more attempts to escape, as the creature withdrew apparently to the far side of the room. The three men and the astronomer lowered their weapons and looked to one another for any sign of understanding for the lull. Suddenly, there was a scream as if from multiple inhuman vocal chords striking the same tortured note simultaneously which tapered to a staccato of smaller cries.

It did not sound even remotely human. More like a feral cat with its voice box exposed.

In the intervening moments, a hissing began to issue forth from the echoing recesses of the morgue autopsy room. The creature was gathering its strength for one final effort. The pathologists, the deputy and the young black woman raised their weapons again; uncertain of what reserves the wounded Chupacabra had left. It was hurt after having been struck by a car. It should have been tired, if not by the travel between kills, then at least sated after committing them.

As if sensing their thoughts and defiant of them, the four foot tall reptilian creature understood the greatest area of resistance remaining in the bent frame of the threshold. In the dark of the empty room, it balanced on its claws and propped against the back wall. Its breathing was labored, the narrow, birdlike chest rising and falling, as the heavy muscles of its thighs clenched. The dark, lidless eyes glowed from within as the spikes on its back rose in anticipation of a final stand with the humans outside.

It knew them by scent, of course. Four individuals. Three male, one female. If the Chupacabra had come upon them in the wild, it would have been the woman that would die first. She posed the greatest long-term threat. She could reproduce. There was little time to choose a first victim now, in self-defense. It would have to be the one that attacked first. Its survival depended on overcoming the largest, the bravest of those outside. Once it killed the first human it had ever directly and consciously encountered, the others would flee.

But not far.

Drawing back the lipless mouth to reveal long, sharp canines through which her tongue slithered like an armored serpent, the glow it its eyes reached a volcanic crimson and it cried out in anguish, anger and resignation all at once. She looked once off into the corner at the makeshift nest with the overturned equipment and ran across the room with a bounding leap.

It struck the door near the top of the mantle with the full force of its kicking legs, using its vestigial wings for lift and balance. Jacobs and the others barely had warning as the door slammed from its hinges and nearly fell on top of them, in a cloud of dust and debris. They clutched their ears against the resounding cacophony, as the door bounced once against the cracked tile of the floor beneath it and lay still.

Only momentarily distracted as they gazed at the fallen door and the swirling mist of powdered mortar beyond the threshold, they each slowly and unsteadily brought their weapons to bear on the unfathomable darkness. There was no movement, any light or sound for the space of several tense moments. It was free, and to try and escape now, to run headlong and heedless of the weapons they now brandished, would have been sheer madness. They had captured the creature and imprisoned it. It knew and would have its revenge, whatever form that would take.

They saw the ruddy glow of its eyes first, enshrouded in the settling dust, but it was the claws that first pushed through the veil. They pinched at the air as the Chupacabra drew itself out into the threshold atop the steel door, the talons of its nails clicking. It balanced precariously on it haunches, drawing its spindly arms inward until the claws of its three fingered hands nearly met across the thin chest. Although Odessa had chased after the legends and ran from the stories of the Goatsucker from childhood, she had never before seen one in the flesh.

It 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 still 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 room asked the question almost simultaneously, with puzzled looks from the men to one another, then turning their hopes for an explanation to the radio astronomer.

"Now look, guys. I stumbled on a mystery in El Campo, Puerto Rico that was just like the one we suffered at home on Trinidad-Tobago. I didn't think there was much I could do to help. I just wanted to learn as much as I could so that I could compare it with what we knew back where I was from." It was almost a protest of innocence, as if in the few moments she had been embroiled in the confrontation with the Chupacabra that she had failed to reveal the reason for it all.

"It wasn't until I started getting closer to an old military base in the hills above El Campo, which I discovered to be anything but abandoned, that I began to be stonewalled, followed, wiretapped and vandalized by the goons of the U.S. military that now conveniently show up to 'protect us'. I know little more about the creature than any of you, I swear. Except, perhaps, that it is real and the government knows about it."

"Which is quite enough," the general explained, as much to agree with her assessment as to silence Odessa, before she gave away any of her understanding to the disbelieving men she had only just met. "I suppose if we're to get your cooperation, we'll have to either threaten or arrest you. The choice is yours, gentlemen, but please, time is of the essence and I'll need your decision quickly."

"Why do you need us?" Jacobs asked, drawing up to eye level with the general, who waved off the burly soldiers who bristled at the challenge. "You keep talking as if this thing isn't over. If you don't want to explain what's going on here and your part in it, you can just take us away of lock us up. But that's not what you want us to do. Unless I miss my guess," Jacobs said as if searching for answers in the other man's poker gaze, "you need us as bait in whatever you've got planned. If we decide not to go along, you'd have to stake us out somewhere that we'd be found."

"Very good," the general said, with genuine satisfaction. "It makes me wonder why you ever left behind a detective's badge in New Orleans. You have a natural gift at ferreting out information, Deputy Roth Jacobs. Oh yes, I know all about you. As a matter of fact, your life history and that of your companions here is available to me at whatever level of detail I require. At my discretion, I could make it impossible for any of you to seek employment in any God-fearing nation on this earth again. Do I make myself clear?"

"Not at all!" Oscarson fumed, pulling out of David Klein's restraining grip. "How dare you come in here and threaten us after all we've been through. I, for one, will not go along with any scheme you have in mind for us, without some answers as to why you're here and what this all means."

His fellow pathologist, the deputy and the radio astronomer all nodded in agreement.

The general sighed heavily and asked for a few moments of privacy with the four, at which the young corporal and his team reluctantly withdrew from the coroner's office out into the parking lot. The general walked to a side window and pulled up the blinds in the darkened room. Outside, there was a flurry of activity, a mobile laboratory, an APC or armored personnel carrier and a black staff limousine with a lieutenant driver. There were easily a dozen men with two-thirds in military dress. The remaining four were dressed in white smocks and lab coats as they consulted with one another on the steps of the mobile lab.

"My name is Brigadier General Randall Wilkes. I have been involved with army intelligence for the past seventeen years as an adjutant to the army chief of staff. Holders of that position have changed with public whim and White House political party affiliations, but I have remained to safeguard national secrets that it are best kept with a few, steadfast individuals."

"You must understand that if you elect, at some later point in time, to disclose what I am about to tell you, not only will your government disavow the information, but you will suffer every censure and loss of rights as an American citizen over which I have control. Is that clear to you all?"

"You can't do that," Emil scoffed. I know my rights as a sworn American citizen."

"Not only can he," Jacobs said in resignation, "he just did."

"Thank you, again, for your perceptive nature," General Wilkes complimented the deputy, then added for the benefit of the others, "he's quite right, you know. Your futures were placed in my capable hands the moment I was dispatched with my men to seek you out, along with the creature you apprehended. My only regret is that I was too late to save it from the cowboy shootout with the good deputy here."

Jacobs bristled, but remained silent. How was he to know the cavalry was about to show up?

The general ignored the look the half-Cajun deputy gave him, rounded the empty receptionist's desk and took a seat. "Get comfortable, all of you. This may take some time and we only have until nightfall to get ready."

"Ready?" Odessa said, as if she already knew and feared the answer.

"Really, Ms. Davis. I'd have thought that, after all this time, you would know that these creatures are nocturnal, at least. Apparently, there is a great deal that you truly do not understand about them. I presumed too much in having you sequestered and finally removed from your position, public funding for the Phoenix Project aside. Do you really suppose that the government of the United States has lost all interest in space exploration or life out there, should it exist?"

All four took up chairs or leaned against short cabinets and end tables in the office.

"In the late 1940's, our nation entered the atomic age. We did so by smuggling out the German scientists that were instructing the Nazis about jet-powered flight and the means to use that access to wipe out its enemies. Had Germany not been stopped, there were plans on the books of the Nazi Third Reich to use a high altitude, delta-winged jet bomber to deliver an atomic bomb to the city of New York on April 13, 1946."

"Delta-winged. You mean like the B2 bomber and the F-117A stealth aircraft?" Jacobs asked.

"Precisely like those craft, and interesting that you should mention them, deputy. But the acquisition of the German scientists' knowledgeable in the field of physics and aeronautics was only half of the equation. There were also those who experimented, during the war, with the first rudimentary genetic engineering. The Nazis were hoping that if they weren't truly the Aryan race, that they could manufacture one. Unfortunately, those upon whom they experimented were anything but the blonde hair, blue-eyed giants they hoped to create. I will say no more on that matter."

"At the end of World War Two, our unreliable Russian allies took it upon themselves to develop into the next super power, since they had nothing more to fear from the Germans or the Japanese. What scientists we could not entice with democracy and freedom opted to cast in their lots with the Soviet communists. Some did not go willingly, and many ended up in Siberian gulags, or worse."

"A race was on in the development and amassing of weapons throughout the 1950s, when both nations looked to the heavens as the next frontier to dominate. The Space Race was born. All our technology toward this end was moved out to an area 90 miles north of Las Vegas called Groom Lake in 1954 where the U-2 spy plane was developed to fly reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union."

"Area 51?" Odessa interrupted for the benefit of the listeners. The general nodded reluctantly.

"Since that time, the base was also used to build and test the SR-71 Blackbird, the A-12 Avenger, YF-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter and the D-21 drone, used so effectively during the war with Iraq. All were essentially stealth technology aircraft at the time. But I digress. The important thing for you to know is that part of our interest turned to the Russian scientists who learned about gene splicing through experimentation. We felt the ability would give them an unfair advantage in the race to dominate the planets closest to our own. Once inhabited, the moon could have been used as a base of operation to wipe out the enemies of the nation that first planted its flag."

"Is that why President Kennedy predicted an American on the moon by the end of the 1960s?"

Roth Jacobs was leaning forward on his chair now, hands folded at the knuckles. He was the grandson of a career military man and a Jacobs family heritage of serving their country back to the Battle of 1812 when his French ancestors first defected to the American cause. The deputy was beginning to understand the role the U.S. played in the balance of power during the Cold War. It still did not explain the creature he had only twenty minutes earlier shot with both barrels of an over and under shotgun at close range.

He said as much to the general, who cautioned that he was getting to the heart of the matter.

"With the Russians trying to adapt soldiers for outer space, or so we believed, they already had a man in orbit while we were saddled with a monkey. They'd beaten us, or so it seemed. President Truman had ordered that we maintain vigilance as to the breech of our national air space by craft terrestrial as well as extra-terrestrial. He, as you'll recall, was president not only at the time of the decision to drop the atomic bomb, but oversaw the first retrieval of a downed alien craft in Roswell, New Mexico. It was the site of nuclear testing and the B-29 bomber wing group which dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima."

"In spite of an agenda of misinformation and threats by plain-clothes military intelligence, such as when I and two of my men interrogated Ms. Davis. My apologies, but I was under strict orders to conduct, we needed to ascertain what she knew about the activities at the El Campo research center."

"You see, our government felt that we had an advantage not yet shared by the Soviet Union. We not only collected the debris that scattered a wide swath cut in the fields of a ranch near Corona, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. We found bodies. Small bodies, no larger than children, laid neatly across the ground."

"One other, we presume the commander, had survived and was apprehended shortly thereafter in the immediate vicinity. The craft was taken to Roswell, then to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. From there, it was eventually taken to Area 51 for reverse engineering, so that we could harvest the technology. The pilot was taken in seclusion to the equivalent area for genetic research in the hills above El Campo, Puerto Rico."

Odessa spoke up. "So, you're telling me that the Chupacabra is an alien, like the little grays they're always talking about on TLC and the Discovery Channel? Wait a minute. That means they got away from you, doesn't it? Even back in the 1950s, when they were first reported in El Campo. You lost track of them, even then..."

"Partially, Ms. Davis. It wouldn't have done us any good simply to take an alien and put it back in one of its own ships and send it into space. There needed to be human potential and control, a terrestrial mind in a body better adapted for the rigors of space flight at the speeds reverse engineering of their craft would allow us, we thought, as early as the 1970s." The coroners gaped at one another as Jacobs drew in a quick breath and held it.

Roth interrupted, abruptly. "The military used German scientists to perform experimentation in genetic engineering, just as we were discovering the double helix and DNA back in the mid-1950s? That was pretty dangerous, wasn't it?"

"Extremely, or so it would seem now, in retrospect", the general agreed, reluctantly. "In trying to perfect a human/alien hybrid, we inadvertently developed a highly trained super soldier, complete with night vision and a chameleon-like ability to blend into its environment. Its humanity keeps it from selecting us as victims, although I doubt that it understands why."

Odessa stopped the general as he sought to continue. "That would explain the glowing eyes and the overall appearance, but it's been reported to have spikes along its back, with patches of what has been described as feathers and fur. Did they stop with humans, or are there other animals in the mix?"

"Good question," General Wilkes agreed. "We found the alien DNA to be highly adaptable, probably in response to the space faring nature of its race. It could blend with whatever it sampled, and has evolved in part by ingesting the DNA of its victims and passing it along to the next generation. In case you haven't noticed, Ms. Davis, there are subtle differences in the descriptions of these creatures. Some have wings, some snouts. Some have shown characteristics of yet other animals. The three clawed hands, feet, large eyes and proboscis are common to all of them."

"I am disappointed that no one has yet asked about their mating habits and behavior. It is in this area that they are perhaps most like us. They bond for life, although they are asexual. Each specimen has a male and female counterpart, and they join to ensure the survival of their species. As hybrids, they are unable to breed, but they have found a way around the natural limitation of sterility. What we found this morning and took into isolation was a pupa, a Chupacabra encased in a sort of cocoon until it is ready to be hatched."

"The Chupacabra will expel them instinctively and spontaneously, if they feel the life of the parent is in danger. So you see, deputy, the mother knew that the father, the protective strength within it, could not defeat you. It was prepared to die. We have taken the unborn Goatsucker to see where we went wrong and either bring it back under our control, or destroy the creatures as a race."

Roth's eyes grew large and he turned to meet the stricken gaze of the radio astronomer.

"But, you said the Chupacabra mates for life, and that they will do what's necessary to ensure the survival of their young. If that's true and somehow a mate is say, within thirty miles, it might learn that it had lost the mother of its young and come looking for its offspring. That's also why you've come, isn't it? Not just to take away the pregnant mother, but the father as well?"

"Very good, deputy Jacobs," the general said with the first show of pleasure in his taut face.

"They are, by their alien nature, more like bugs than animals. The proboscis, the eyes, the lack of a discernable mouth, ears and nose; these are all characteristics of insects. They are like species of bees that know when one of their kind has been killed, where and by whom..."

The coroners, Oscarson and Klein, understood first what the general was not saying.

"That is why you need us, because the mate of the Chupacabra knows it died here by some broken psychic link, and that whether or not we remain in your protective custody, our lives are already in danger?"

General Wilkes nodded and motioned for a pair of guards to enter the room.

Jacobs was only fishing before, but he understood perfectly now that one creature could not have attacked the Syke's bull at the T-Bar Ranch and the Rottweiller at the Third Round in the space of 24 hours. They shared a biorhythm and probably even gestated spontaneously at the same time. For all Roth knew, he could be dealing with another angry mother. Of course, they would know when they were out of contact with each other and why.

It would be coming for them as the captors and, ultimately, the killers of its mate.

"How long do we have?" Odessa asked, already dreading the answer.

"Nightfall," General Wilkes replied. "The mate of the one you killed is already on its way here."

### ENDGAME

The death cry came as the piercing of an inhuman soul. Though still over twenty miles away and subsisting on fish, alligator and the occasional swamp bird, the remaining Chupacabra knew that it was suddenly alone. Others of its kind were now beyond sensing. The life of its mate had ended in violence and hatred. The creatures knew fear only as caution and Man as the provider and the creator. They were to be avoided at all costs. To be near them when the prey was taken was to be stung or bitten by their weapons, sometimes to death.

Never before had it sought out one of the human species to kill. It was forbidden to approach them, to harm them in any way. All of its kind understood and obeyed. Those few rogues were killed, not by their human tormentors, but by the other Chupacabra, themselves. There would be none to stop the Goatsucker now. It was alone in a vast and unknown land. They had ventured far from the islands of their birth when cast together, to seek out a life of their own. There was an unbreakable bond between mates, though neither required the presence of the other to reproduce. It was to assure the survival of offspring that they were bound, and the psychic link which was now broken.

The silence in its mind was maddening, like a desert wind filled with ghosts and shadows. It was not loneliness or revenge that drove it out of hiding in the blinding light of day, but survival of the next generation of its kind. One could not live without the other, although neither strayed within the territory of its mate but for one purpose:

Their sole purpose as mates was to bring together the spawn of each and leave them to live or die with the genetic enhancements of the animals acclimated or indigenous to the area. Adaptation was the key to survival, back to the stardust from which they came in another form, to be joined with humanity. The experimentation to create a hybrid was successful because it was inherent in the alien DNA, not because of men who dared to play gods. They did not create. They did not perfect. They simply facilitated the inevitable.

It ran on thick, heavily muscled legs or hopped like a kangaroo, the atrophied arms drawn in against the narrow, ribbed chest. The head swiveled on a fragile neck, but the large, dark eyes did not blink as they averted to shun the golden amber of the mid-afternoon sun. It found man's road and skirted the fences of Man's land, including that of the ranch and the bull on which it preyed, three nights previous. It was hunted now, or at least watched. It was bred to vacate an area with its mate once it was seen, returning night after night until it was discovered or no food remained.

Its mate was dead, but the offspring sang to it in a mewling mind link. The distended belly of it ached in response as the life inside called out psychically to its future mate. They must be brought together.

There was not much time.

Due to the fallen condition of the door to Autopsy Room One, Roth, Odessa and the two coroners were sequestered into the adjacent autopsy room with a posted guard. A call was placed in the deputy's behalf to Bill James in the Jefferson Sheriff's Department that Jacobs was assisting the military in a special operation. The reason for the sudden presence of the U.S. Army was strictly on a need to know basis. James did not need to know, the general explained. Lacking natural curiosity, the deputy with two first names thought nothing more about it and did not interfere.

Klein and Oscarson had asked for and received a deck of cards from the drawer of a cabinet to their shared office. Their patience was infinite in the manner of their profession. No one that came in contact with them was going anywhere, and they considered the interruption of their mundane practice by the deputy, the radio astrologer, the military and the creature to be quite a diversion. Other than living in fear of their lives, they had no desire to see it end.

"Ms. Davis? Odessa," Roth began as he turned to look out the small window near the top of the wall. "These things have only been around for fifty years or so, from what you've told me. The military seems to agree with you, but I can't help thinking that it takes longer for something so monstrous to become a part of the Latino culture as it has."

"Every culture has its monsters, deputy. Every civilization, as well. The Mayans worshipped a vampiric deity that supposedly fed solely on the sacrifices of live animals. Their likeness has been found on temple walls of ancient ruins in South America dating back over 2000 years. Their modern day descendants still hold ceremonial rituals of sacrifice and still believe in the traditions surrounding them."

"As for the Chupacabra being a product of the Hispanic community, it is no less so than Louisiana's Honey Island Swamp Monster or Bigfoot, in the Pacific Northwest. The lake monsters of the British Isles are renowned because early Christian saints supposedly rebuked them. They're still around, aren't they? Fact or fiction, we all need embodiments of natural mystery and wonder. As we've both seen today, the Chupacabra is real enough, and a product of our own arrogance."

The sound of light but begrudging applause was heard from out in the hall. before the general came into view. "Well put, Ms. Davis. Now, you may be too young to remember, but in the 1950s, the threat of nuclear attack and decimation of the earth was very real to patriotic Americans. The Russians were pulling ahead, and we needed an advantage if space was not to become the next conquest of the communists."

"Perhaps we did invent a monster, with just enough humanity to frighten us. In the end, that couldn't be helped. We have spent enough time and money in pursuit of these creatures, and you know what? Their range and influence are spreading. There are rumored attacks now in heavily populated areas of the United States, and not just with the influx of predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrants. If Mexicans enter the country legally, they have a right to be here. It is my duty and obligation to defend that right by the constitution and the order of the President."

"Right now, I have units following up on a trail of reports from the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, South America, Mexico and several major U.S. cities, including New York City, New Jersey, San Antonio and San Francisco. In Sweetwater, Miami in Dade County, Florida, 69 animals were killed in one night and strewn across the lawns of two families. I am told it has even now been reported in Moscow. I am mostly concerned about rural areas like Jefferson, where the majority of the attacks go unreported to the proper authorities."

"Meaning you," Odessa scoffed.

"Meaning me," General Wilkes replied evenly. "Which reminds me, the sun will be going down in about an hour and we need to get you folks ready for any penetration of our perimeter by the Chupacabra." The general shook his head. "Lord, how I hate that name, but if I told you its real project code name, I'd have to kill you!"

He laughed and was still chuckling to himself and his two MPs as he left the room, to be replaced by a team of medical technicians in biohazard gear that inoculated the four against contagion. It seemed to the three men and a woman that they were already being treated, as if infected and under quarantine. The injections, which included air propelled shots to the neck, right arm and hip, were explained as antibiotics, metabolic steroids, electrolytes and blood coagulants, just in case.

"Just in case of what?" Emil Oscarson asked his colleague David Klein, who shook his head uncertainly. They both looked to the men in white contamination suits, but they were already packing up their gear, dropping the empty hypodermic containers, as well as the airguns used to administer them, in bags emblazoned with the biohazard seal. To Roth, it was always difficult to distinguish the emblem from that of nuclear waste. No matter. They were both signs of potential health risks.

The worst was yet to come.

Checkpoints were established by the general at each edge of the parking lot in front of as well as behind the county morgue. Drawn between them was a series of low-density carbolic lasers, set one atop the other, the beams running up a pole every eighteen inches to a height of nearly nine feet. Together, they formed a perfect square and nothing could pass over, under or through them, undetected.

General Wilkes and his staff officers directed activities from the mobile laboratory, situated near the western end of the county coroner's office building. Once confirmation began to come in that something was testing the invisible fencing, they knew that it could only be the Chupacabra. The creature was capable of differentiating between levels of biological heat as well as synthetic. It knew where the lasers were located and was testing them for a break or other discontinuity that would allow it to gain entry into the makeshift compound set up by the military.

To the Chupacabra pacing outside the perimeter boundaries set up by the low frequency band waves, the laser beams formed a perfect box, with four deflectors to a side emitting vectors out on the other three remaining sides. It could not only sense their presence, it could see them as plainly as brightly-lit red neon suspended in air. Instinctively, it knew their function as well, and it sought a means to break in without sounding an alarm as to its presence or whereabouts.

The additional height and coverage provided by the overhead projectors were only a temporary deterrence. The signals ended at the eaves of the pair of buildings. It could see a room, almost white with incandescence, with men in green and others covered head to toe in white, moving about inside. It feared blindness, however temporary, and knew instinctively that its mate and offspring had been relocated there. The place the adult had died was not in this smaller structure with wheels and struts braced against the parking lot asphalt. The pheromones led its senses to the brick building with the glass doors and skylights.

Skylights...

Even as it withdrew several paces and leapt with a spread of its vestigial wings, like membranes connecting the length of its arms to its sides, a plan formulated in its predatorial mind. There was a presence inside of the human responsible for the death of its mate, as well as others that had been witnesses, if not participants. Other humans armed with biting or stinging weapons would be there to protect them, if the lasers were any indication.

If it was successful, it would take revenge on the human male or any of the others too weak to commit the act but benefited by it. If not, the diversion would be created anyway and the creature's true destination, that of the room all in white where its dead mate and unborn offspring lay, would be inadequately defended in the confusion.

It reached the rooftop and touched lightly down, with little more than a clicking of its three-toed claws splayed hand and foot to distribute its weight. There was no reaction or movement down below after several tense moments as it began to crawl, talons extended, to where it could peer down into the skylight and the room below.

It was gazing down into a foyer, just off the main hall. As the Chupacabra turned its teardrop-shaped head and nearly pressed its face flat against the glass, it could just make out the high boot tops of the MP at the near side of the door. It could sense another, and that they both stood before the room in which others of their kind exuded fear at their situation.

It delayed only a moment, before plunging feet first through the locked skylight, dropping its four-foot tall body down in a rain of glass and aluminum framing. The soldiers responded almost immediately, but not quickly enough, as the Goatsucker caught the nearest in the chest with its thick lower legs and drove him against the wall. The other got off a single shot of his .45 caliber pistol before he was clawed across the shoulder and neck.

By this time, the four beyond the door ceased all movement, as it sought a means into the sealed room. Only for a moment, it forgot about the first soldier who had all the wind knocked out of him. The guard rose unsteadily to his feet, took careful aim with his revolver and fired. The Chupacabra was struck in the rib cage by a glancing shot that drove it into the far side of a narrow alcove.

Reaching down, it perceived by the greenish, copper-based blood suffused with that of iron-based red, that it had been hit in at least one of its three stomachs. Attacking the four, and hoping to reach its trapped offspring before help arrived for the humans, was no longer an option. It could be overpowered or worse and lose the advantage of surprise.

Instead, it charged at the two men aiding one another to their feet and gripped them each by the shoulder with its claws in a driving leap that propelled it to a skid before the glass doors to the parking lot. Men were now running to the building from the white room as the guards took up their weapons and ran towards it. With nowhere left to turn, it gazed upward and saw the second skylight directly overhead. It waited to the last possible moment, then coiled 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, and is currently pursuing an interest in fossil diving.

When he isn't exploring remote locations such as the Altamaha River, Mt. St. Helens or Loch Ness, Tanner is content to write novels under the watchful eye of Samwise, the longhaired Maine Coon that sleeps atop his monitor. Dallas now lives in Greenville, SC, with his wife Carla and their five children, where he is at work on his latest project. You can visit him online at www.dallastanner.com, and his publisher at www.trilogus.com.

Also written by Dallas Tanner, and published by Trilogus Books

### THE CRYPTIDS TRILOGY

We live on just 10% of the Earth's surface. Only an estimated 10% of all the known species of animals on this planet have been encountered and classified. Cryptozoology is the study of unknown or undiscovered cryptids, animals out of place or time. There are no degrees or curriculum in any college or university to become a cryptozoologist. Ian McQuade tries and fails to become the first, and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime!

Enter the World of Cryptofiction in The Cryptids Trilogy

The Journey Begins...

### SHADOW OF THE THUNDERBIRD

The Journey Continues...

### TRACK OF THE BIGFOOT

The Journey Ends...

### WAKE OF THE LAKE MONSTER

There is a developing relationship, between the two main protagonists, that runs throughout the trilogy. That is, when their obvious differences aren't overshadowed by obstacles in the form of ancient cities, harsh terrains, mystics, prehistoric beasts, traps, puzzles, secret organizations/societies, otherworldly technology, and the occasional megalomaniac bent on world domination.
