Agents Against Inhumanity (Prologue)
Welcome! Below is the prologue to a book I'm working on. Let me know what you think!
“Little” Mike Schicksal was the new guy. He hated being the new guy, but he really hated being the new guy in law enforcement. Sure, his mom was happy he followed his late Dad’s footsteps joining the State Troopers in Washington State, but that didn’t make getting the “Hellmouth” shift three times in a row any less stressful.
The senior troopers always joked about the Hellmouth. The road’s actual name was Helganoth Drive, but thanks to some skilled vandalism the sign now read Hellmouth. Someone at the trooper station might’ve cleaned it up if the road wasn’t now part of their identity.
The trooper station that presided over the highways surrounding the Utesway tribal lands and reserve was famous for its unexplained “incidents”. It was so prevalent that every single trooper at the station had his or her own story, and the Hellmouth seemed to be the spiritual focal point or something ridiculous like that. Mike hadn’t been paying too much attention when the guys were talking about it, but he listened enough to know over half of these “events” happened on Hellmouth.
So here he was. Stuck in one of the most annoying initiation rituals possible. You weren’t considered a real State Trooper around this county until you’d seen your own supernatural hub hub.
Anthony the voice operator scared his kids at night about the coven of witches he’d stumbled upon in the woods. He claimed they took some of his hair, and that’s why he was bald. Of course, that might have more to do with stress trying to deal with his twin daughters entering high school. Not even a real coven could compare to the witches that stalked the halls of the public school system.
Trooper Ramos would laugh about how some crazy winged Jersey Devil thing swooped his squad car. He still wants to kill it for spilling his coffee.
Luna, the random hot blond that for some unfathomable reason became a trooper instead of a model, swears she saw a pack of wild dogs standing on their hind legs and smoking cigarettes. Little nuts, but nobody wants to disagree with a beautiful woman.
Mike wasn’t sure about all that. The only one of the stories he really believed was the Chief’s, and that was because he never talked about it. Whatever happened, his boss refused to ever go onto the reservation, and never near the mountains or the forest.
Mike cursed as he swerved to avoid a white deer with massive antlers sitting right in the center of the road. He would have turned the oversized beast into crunchy red jello if its eyes hadn’t reflected out of the blanket of darkness. The woods were so tight on this stretch that you couldn’t see the stars through the haunting tree branches...
When the Trooper looked back in his mirror the deer was gone. The forest was dead calm, and a slight mist was blowing its way down the mountains obscuring his view further. Worse, it was making him think of wild stories of talking dogs and witches. Mike really hated Hellmouth.
He was going to need to make up a story already, and it needed to be something juicy to ditch Hellmouth duty yet still quasi believable. Mike would probably troll those crazy bigfoot forums he heard about online for ideas. That ought to work.
Trooper Mike shook his head. Couldn’t a guy just do his job? Mike did understand deep down why everyone and their nieces hound thought the road was creepy. The Hellmouth felt like a dark tunnel sucking out your hope and dreams with each passing mile, and with each passing section of thick claustrophobic inducing trees. Either that or Mike was just feeling dramatic. That said, he'd like to be free to work in peace.
The Trooper grimaced at the winding road that seemed to be hell bent on making him spill his coffee. Dammit! Did he just make a pun? Just when Trooper Mike thought he couldn’t have hated the idiotic road more it was now making him think about hell puns.
“Hey little Mike! It’s your lucky night. We got a call from some campers about a couple of semis illegally parked near the forty mile marker on Hellmouth. Luna’s betting vampires,” Mike rolled his eyes. Did all beautiful women get trapped in pop culture clichés? Shouldn’t it be aliens, or a cryptic since he was in the woods?
Mike begrudgingly put his coffee away and stretched. He was more of a motorcycle kind of guy. Cars always felt cramped. He imagined it was what dogs felt like being stuffed into mini kennels instead of letting them stick their heads out the window. Crap did he just compare himself to a dog? He couldn’t even blame that on the idiots snickering on the other end of the radio.
“Mike ya there?” Oh right, it was his job to answer wasn’t it? What a pain.
“Yeah, I’m here Anthony. I’m on it.”
“You want some silver bullets?”
“Those are for killing werewolves Anthony.”
“You say tomato, I say potato. Just check out the trucks.”
Mike felt like rolling his eyes again, but instead hit the gas. Sooner this was over with the better. It was probably some trucker hiding a prostitute in his cab. Sure were enough of them on the reservation. Like moths to a flame were prostitutes to casinos, and after being raised in Las Vegas Mike knew a casino might as well be a furnace for lost girls.
Mike kept up his speed for about five or six turns before the woods became so thick what stars that were left were blotted out of the sky and the full moon swallowed. It was so dark you could’ve cut it with a switchblade. Mike flipped on his searchlights just in time for the mist to turn into a full on fog making such an intense beam useless. The cloud was so thick the Trooper thought his patrol car was going to bounce off the rolling fog like a hotwheel flying into a bowl of thick jello. Safe driving just became impossible. Great.
Mike threw up his fog lights, and saw a whole lot of nothing. A black hole of white. After a sharp turn gnarled trees sprang out from the mist trying to drag any unwary driver into the woods to be consumed. The Trooper had to slow his cruiser to a crawl as hungry grasping cliffs appeared to his left reminding Mike of how many motorists were lost on this road every year. He didn’t feel like adding his name to the list of souls sacrificed to the famished forest gods.
Each mile seemed to take an hour, and every sweep of the searchlight showed nothing. Mike chewed his lip. Where were these stupid trucks? A loud crash ate through the thick fog making Mike almost spill his coffee. The Trooper screeched his cruiser to a stop, and shut off the engine to listen. A third circle of hell scream of death ripped through the fog accompanied by a roar that would put the beefiest grizzly bear to shame.
An animal attack. Holy St. Augustine this truck business just got tricky. Trooper Mike jumped out of his cruiser like an utter moron, but with enough wits about him to run to his trunk. He whipped out the AR 15 standard issue rifle, and loaded it as fast as his clammy hands could handle. It was unnerving hearing the carnage, but if he ran into a full blown grizzly high on bloodlust his glock nine mill might as well be a squirt gun. Hells bells he wished he had a heavier caliber than his AR. Bears didn’t go down easy, and only a moron city slicker thought a simple shotgun was enough to take down an eight hundred pound mound of bone and muscle.
“Anthony, I need back up! We got a major code 10-91V on my position,” Mike hissed into his radio.
“Code 10-91V? You’re shitting me.” Anthony was serious, but sounded like he wasn’t sure if it was a joke.
“I’m not! Get me an ambulance and the rangers ASAP!”
“Roger that, hang in there Mike. Don’t do anything stupid,” Anthony yelled a little too loud through the radio. Something stupid? Oh it was going to be way worse than that. Mike’s future wife, whenever he met her, was going to rip him a new one after she heard about this.
Mike ran towards the noise, and was swallowed by the fog almost instantly. One second there was a police cruiser the next he was running through the matrix before the program was properly loaded. With a grimace he fired off several rounds in the air pumping the trigger six times for good measure. The familiar kick was comforting. He wasn’t helpless. It was a nice thought till he waded through an odd puddle that splashed crimson liquid all over his service uniform.
The salty sweet smell of blood and intestines hit him a second later. Well, at least he had something concrete to follow. A light breeze shuffled through the mist making the seething clouds shift. Out from the sea of white a figure appeared squirming on the ground ten feet ahead. It was what was left of a greasy truck driver judging by the trucker hat and jeans. Pity his guts were hanging out, and the bear was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the shots had made it run out.
“Help!” croaked the man before he gibbered off in Arabic. For once those summer internships in college to Turkey were going to pay off. Trooper Mike even caught onto the accent which marked him as most likely Pakistani. Unfortunately, he was babbling on about jinns and demons. Not too helpful when you’re trying to deal with a feral bear.
“Stay there!” Mike hissed in his horribly accented Arabic. It got the man’s attention, and he seemed to calm down. The wounds were bad, but Mike had seen guys almost cut in half brought back from the brink. If they were fast maybe they could still save this guy.
A growl froze time for both Mike, and the Pakistani truck driver. The man screamed as a monstrous paw larger than the man's chest reached out from the maw of the fog, and dragged him with a sudden ferocity into the glutinous mist. Mike cussed seven times in his brain, and fired half his clip instinctively into the white thick curtain. The shouts were cut short, and the worst thing imaginable happened: silence descended on the blood choked gravel.
Mike started to back up with haunting steps. Bear? Try hellhound. That thing wasn’t eight hundred pounds. If the paw matched the body it was over a thousand pounds. Forget the AR 15, he was going to need an elephant gun, or even a tank.
Each step crunched through the gravel like a moose grazing in a cheeto factory. Every second that passed Mike imagined a monstrous bear that could give a T Rex a run for its money rushing from the clouds. Then something unexpected happened. The trooper backed into something solid and cold. He turned around, and found a large semi truck with its sides ripped to shreds by claw marks and blood. Looking past the rig he could just make out a second truck with flashing emergency lights nearby.
Not knowing what else to do, Mike ran up to the cab, ripped open the door with sweaty palms, and jumped in. He was greeted with several squeals that sounded like a thousand squeak toys going off at once just daring the monster bear to eat them. Inside the sleeper were no less than three girls. Two of them were in their early twenties, scantily clad, and were speaking what sounded like Russian while the third was no older than six and clearly part of the tribe. Two prostitutes and an underage native in a truck’s sleeper. Yeah, nothing shady going on here. This was going to be one hell of a story, and a tone of paperwork if they all got out of this alive.
“Shh! I’m a police officer. Let’s not get the bear’s attention okay?” Mike whispered desperately to the prostitutes. The two Russians tried to quiet down, but were still sobbing. Oddly enough, the little girl with the shining black eyes and pigtails seemed calm and as relaxed as Mike hoped he looked.
“It’s okay sir. My brother is taking care of it.” The little girl said with a smile.
“What? You’re brother is here? Where? We need help,” Mike said that, but couldn’t help thinking that he had another civilian he needed to try and save out in that damn fog. It just gets better and better.
“Yes, he’s here. Don’t worry. The bad men can’t hurt him,” The girl crossed her arms, and nodded toward the other truck. An engine revving made Mike jump. Out from the back of the other semi’s trailer a pick up truck flew out, and rushed away into the mist. There went the other truck driver, and what was a pick up doing in the back of a standard cargo trailer? Didn’t they have special trailers meant for moving cars and trucks? This was just getting weirder and weirder by the second.
A furious roar sounded on top of the truck. Before that hideous thought could register the entire door of the cab ripped open, and monstrous paws scooped the little native girl right out of the truck. The bear was off before Mike could even aim his rifle.
“Stay here!” Shouted the Trooper to the civies as he ran after the monster. He was getting his full sprint on when a noise caught his attention from within the truck trailer. It was supposed to be a refrigerated meat truck, but instead there was some kind of cage beyond the shattered trailer doors. Mike took a closer look and sucked in a breath. There were people in there. Mostly women and kids. Holy guacamole Human Traffickers.
Before Mike could think about letting them out another roar to his left caught his attention. Priorities, these people were probably safer in the cages right now. He couldn’t have them getting lost in the fog, and then mauled by a homicidal bear. First he had a girl to save or at least kill the bear.
Mike ran off into the woods and mist following the sounds of destruction and growls. It seemed like the chase lasted centuries as the seconds ticked by, and the branches whipped across his face. He lost the trail more than once amongst the gangly mangled trees, and ravenous mist. If he wasn’t a proper country boy and been hunting since before he could walk, Mike would’ve gotten lost alone in the woods with a monster bear, and he would’ve needed saving. Still, he kept on till the trees began to thin, and ever so grudgingly the mist did as well.
The next thing Mike knew he was running on good old asphalt again. Up the road he saw dozens of headlights appearing in the mist and the chorus of screaming engines. The lights raced forward showing they were connected to motorcycles not squad cars which meant they weren’t more troopers and rangers coming to pull Mike’s ass out of nature’s frying pan. Mike twitched as a horrible thought seeped into his mind. He really, really hoped he’d never given any of these biker guys tickets. Mike wasn’t exactly in the mood for more trouble, and knowing how this night was going they’d be running guns or something even more barbaric.
“What you doing out here officer,” The closest motorcycle stopped, and it’s oversized rider shouted over the din of engines. Before Trooper Mike could answer the monster sized bearded tribesman a small face peeked out from under the biker’s leather jacket.
“Hey bro! That’s him! That’s the nice copper!” Mike felt his jaw drop. The kid was alive? Where was the bear? Wait. No really, where was the bear?
“Everyone get away from the woods! There’s a crazy bear out there and it's hungry,” Trooper Mike shouted and waved madder than an insane asylum inmate off his meds.
“Relax copper. My bro here took care of everything.” The little native girl smiled up at the tower of muscle.
“Easy officer. The bear ran off into the woods. It shouldn’t come near all these bikes and guns right?” The dark bearded youth’s brown eyes twinkled as he held up the gnarliest hand cannon revolver the Trooper had ever seen. Upon further inspection the entire mob of bikers were armed to the teeth, and literally armed for bear. Mike knew deep down that should’ve worried him.
Here he was in the middle of a heavily armed ethnic biker gang of a tribe known to be less than cordial with the state of Washington and her officers. To top it off, he was far from backup, deep in the wilderness, and it was the dead of night. He should’ve been terrified. These guys could be working with the human traffickers themselves, but all Mike could think about was now he finally had enough guns around him to feel certain that nobody near him would become bear food. Thank the Almighty God himself.
As the relief flooded Mike’s mind, a thousand questions filled the Trooper’s head, but something more important wormed its way into his consciousness. There were a couple hundred human trafficking victims trapped in a cage down the road. He really didn’t have time to question his good luck of not losing anyone else to the monster bear.
“What’s your name son? And what are all you doing out here so late? Bear hunting I hope, but more importantly I need a lift down the road right now,” Mike smiled, but felt his palms get clammy again. Oh by all that was holy let these guys not be human traffickers or enforcers for said traffickers. Backup would still be a good thirty minutes away, and Mike knew they would all hear the sirens long before they actually got here. Since he hadn’t heard them yet they had to be a long way off. Out of the bear’s mouth, and into a biker’s sites. Perfect.
“You can call me Bear officer. Thanks for looking out for my sister. You see we were out here chasing down a truck driver who had snatched her at a gas station when I wasn’t looking. We would have called the cops, but all of our cellphones ran out of batteries after we called each other. So we all came after the outsider, and ran into a massive bear instead who ran off after lightening his load so to speak. Hey, how about you hop on behind Greybeard here? We can give you a lift back to your cruiser.”
Mike smiled back at the lying through his teeth biker gang member. Bear. Yeah, Mike recognized him now. The head of the Thunderbear Biker gang on the reservation. That was one stupid trucker. Any local wouldn’t have touched the kid because nobody messed with the Bear on the Rez. This was an old fashion posy on metal horses. In the end, Mike figured it didn’t matter. The kidnapper pervert was bear chow, and his partner in crime was long gone. Besides, there was no way the Trooper was walking back alone through these woods, at night, in a fog, and with a homicidal bear on the loose. No way in hell.
Greybeard was a bald and slightly overweight biker that smelled like very expensive cologne and cigars. He was what Mike would’ve thought Santa Clause would be like if he had joined a biker gang, but he wasn’t a bad sort. Just drove a little too fast. Mike knew the man would be free of speeding tickets for the rest of his life. There were perks to helping out a State Trooper in distress.
Mike even laughed a bit as he tried to hold on to his cumbersome AR 15. It was a curvy road after all, and these speed demons were getting a kick out of having an officer of the law riding with them for a change. If Mike was honest so was he. These guys weren’t the gun running types. More the pranking, and speeding types. The adrenaline was almost completely out of Mike’s system so he was even starting to enjoy himself. It helped that the fog had rolled through letting the mountains peak through the horizon when they turned the last bin. If he didn’t know there were a couple hundred people stuffed into a cage in a tractor trailer waiting on him Mike might’ve encouraged them to draw out the ride a bit.
Finally the Trooper could see the clearing where his cruiser and the trucks, or what was left of the trucks, were abandoned. Still, there was a slight problem, the trailer full of human trafficking victims was gone. There were clear indents in the gravel where it had been, and pieces of it were still attached to the truck. Weirdest of all there were no tracks. It was like a monstrous hand had swooped in, and ripped it off. As they got closer it became obvious that part of the truck itself was missing as well showing a secret compartment that must have been meant for smuggling.
All Mike could do was rub his temples. He could hear the sirens over the mountains now, but rather than relief he felt dread. There was going to be a very lengthy, and confusing report to write about all this. One question just kept rolling inside his brain, and he ended up blurting it out loud: “What by St. Augustine's beard was going on around here?”
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Agents Against Inhumanity Book 1: Rumble On the Reservation
Prologue: The Hellmouth
“Little” Mike Schicksal was the new guy. He hated being the new guy, but he really hated being the new guy in law enforcement. Sure, his mom was happy he followed his late Dad’s footsteps joining the State Troopers in Washington State, but that didn’t make getting the “Hellmouth” shift three times in a row any less stressful.
The senior troopers always joked about the Hellmouth. The road’s actual name was Helganoth Drive, but thanks to some skilled vandalism the sign now read Hellmouth. Someone at the trooper station might’ve cleaned it up if the road wasn’t now part of their identity.
The trooper station that presided over the highways surrounding the Utesway tribal lands and reserve was famous for its unexplained “incidents”. It was so prevalent that every single trooper at the station had his or her own story, and the Hellmouth seemed to be the spiritual focal point or something ridiculous like that. Mike hadn’t been paying too much attention when the guys were talking about it, but he listened enough to know over half of these “events” happened on Hellmouth.
So here he was. Stuck in one of the most annoying initiation rituals possible. You weren’t considered a real State Trooper around this county until you’d seen your own supernatural hub hub.
Anthony the voice operator scared his kids at night about the coven of witches he’d stumbled upon in the woods. He claimed they took some of his hair, and that’s why he was bald. Of course, that might have more to do with stress trying to deal with his twin daughters entering high school. Not even a real coven could compare to the witches that stalked the halls of the public school system.
Trooper Ramos would laugh about how some crazy winged Jersey Devil thing swooped his squad car. He still wants to kill it for spilling his coffee.
Luna, the random hot blond that for some unfathomable reason became a trooper instead of a model, swears she saw a pack of wild dogs standing on their hind legs and smoking cigarettes. Little nuts, but nobody wants to disagree with a beautiful woman.
Mike wasn’t sure about all that. The only one of the stories he really believed was the Chief’s, and that was because he never talked about it. Whatever happened, his boss refused to ever go onto the reservation, and never near the mountains or the forest.
Mike cursed as he swerved to avoid a white deer with massive antlers sitting right in the center of the road. He would have turned the oversized beast into crunchy red jello if its eyes hadn’t reflected out of the blanket of darkness. The woods were so tight on this stretch that you couldn’t see the stars through the haunting tree branches...
When the Trooper looked back in his mirror the deer was gone. The forest was dead calm, and a slight mist was blowing its way down the mountains obscuring his view further. Worse, it was making him think of wild stories of talking dogs and witches. Mike really hated Hellmouth.
He was going to need to make up a story already, and it needed to be something juicy to ditch Hellmouth duty yet still quasi believable. Mike would probably troll those crazy bigfoot forums he heard about online for ideas. That ought to work.
Trooper Mike shook his head. Couldn’t a guy just do his job? Mike did understand deep down why everyone and their nieces hound thought the road was creepy. The Hellmouth felt like a dark tunnel sucking out your hope and dreams with each passing mile, and with each passing section of thick claustrophobic inducing trees. Either that or Mike was just feeling dramatic. That said, he'd like to be free to work in peace.
The Trooper grimaced at the winding road that seemed to be hell bent on making him spill his coffee. Dammit! Did he just make a pun? Just when Trooper Mike thought he couldn’t have hated the idiotic road more it was now making him think about hell puns.
“Hey little Mike! It’s your lucky night. We got a call from some campers about a couple of semis illegally parked near the forty mile marker on Hellmouth. Luna’s betting vampires,” Mike rolled his eyes. Did all beautiful women get trapped in pop culture clichés? Shouldn’t it be aliens, or a cryptic since he was in the woods?
Mike begrudgingly put his coffee away and stretched. He was more of a motorcycle kind of guy. Cars always felt cramped. He imagined it was what dogs felt like being stuffed into mini kennels instead of letting them stick their heads out the window. Crap did he just compare himself to a dog? He couldn’t even blame that on the idiots snickering on the other end of the radio.
“Mike ya there?” Oh right, it was his job to answer wasn’t it? What a pain.
“Yeah, I’m here Anthony. I’m on it.”
“You want some silver bullets?”
“Those are for killing werewolves Anthony.”
“You say tomato, I say potato. Just check out the trucks.”
Mike felt like rolling his eyes again, but instead hit the gas. Sooner this was over with the better. It was probably some trucker hiding a prostitute in his cab. Sure were enough of them on the reservation. Like moths to a flame were prostitutes to casinos, and after being raised in Las Vegas Mike knew a casino might as well be a furnace for lost girls.
Mike kept up his speed for about five or six turns before the woods became so thick what stars that were left were blotted out of the sky and the full moon swallowed. It was so dark you could’ve cut it with a switchblade. Mike flipped on his searchlights just in time for the mist to turn into a full on fog making such an intense beam useless. The cloud was so thick the Trooper thought his patrol car was going to bounce off the rolling fog like a hotwheel flying into a bowl of thick jello. Safe driving just became impossible. Great.
Mike threw up his fog lights, and saw a whole lot of nothing. A black hole of white. After a sharp turn gnarled trees sprang out from the mist trying to drag any unwary driver into the woods to be consumed. The Trooper had to slow his cruiser to a crawl as hungry grasping cliffs appeared to his left reminding Mike of how many motorists were lost on this road every year. He didn’t feel like adding his name to the list of souls sacrificed to the famished forest gods.
Each mile seemed to take an hour, and every sweep of the searchlight showed nothing. Mike chewed his lip. Where were these stupid trucks? A loud crash ate through the thick fog making Mike almost spill his coffee. The Trooper screeched his cruiser to a stop, and shut off the engine to listen. A third circle of hell scream of death ripped through the fog accompanied by a roar that would put the beefiest grizzly bear to shame.
An animal attack. Holy St. Augustine this truck business just got tricky. Trooper Mike jumped out of his cruiser like an utter moron, but with enough wits about him to run to his trunk. He whipped out the AR 15 standard issue rifle, and loaded it as fast as his clammy hands could handle. It was unnerving hearing the carnage, but if he ran into a full blown grizzly high on bloodlust his glock nine mill might as well be a squirt gun. Hells bells he wished he had a heavier caliber than his AR. Bears didn’t go down easy, and only a moron city slicker thought a simple shotgun was enough to take down an eight hundred pound mound of bone and muscle.
“Anthony, I need back up! We got a major code 10-91V on my position,” Mike hissed into his radio.
“Code 10-91V? You’re shitting me.” Anthony was serious, but sounded like he wasn’t sure if it was a joke.
“I’m not! Get me an ambulance and the rangers ASAP!”
“Roger that, hang in there Mike. Don’t do anything stupid,” Anthony yelled a little too loud through the radio. Something stupid? Oh it was going to be way worse than that. Mike’s future wife, whenever he met her, was going to rip him a new one after she heard about this.
Mike ran towards the noise, and was swallowed by the fog almost instantly. One second there was a police cruiser the next he was running through the matrix before the program was properly loaded. With a grimace he fired off several rounds in the air pumping the trigger six times for good measure. The familiar kick was comforting. He wasn’t helpless. It was a nice thought till he waded through an odd puddle that splashed crimson liquid all over his service uniform.
The salty sweet smell of blood and intestines hit him a second later. Well, at least he had something concrete to follow. A light breeze shuffled through the mist making the seething clouds shift. Out from the sea of white a figure appeared squirming on the ground ten feet ahead. It was what was left of a greasy truck driver judging by the trucker hat and jeans. Pity his guts were hanging out, and the bear was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the shots had made it run out.
“Help!” croaked the man before he gibbered off in Arabic. For once those summer internships in college to Turkey were going to pay off. Trooper Mike even caught onto the accent which marked him as most likely Pakistani. Unfortunately, he was babbling on about jinns and demons. Not too helpful when you’re trying to deal with a feral bear.
“Stay there!” Mike hissed in his horribly accented Arabic. It got the man’s attention, and he seemed to calm down. The wounds were bad, but Mike had seen guys almost cut in half brought back from the brink. If they were fast maybe they could still save this guy.
A growl froze time for both Mike, and the Pakistani truck driver. The man screamed as a monstrous paw larger than the man's chest reached out from the maw of the fog, and dragged him with a sudden ferocity into the glutinous mist. Mike cussed seven times in his brain, and fired half his clip instinctively into the white thick curtain. The shouts were cut short, and the worst thing imaginable happened: silence descended on the blood choked gravel.
Mike started to back up with haunting steps. Bear? Try hellhound. That thing wasn’t eight hundred pounds. If the paw matched the body it was over a thousand pounds. Forget the AR 15, he was going to need an elephant gun, or even a tank.
Each step crunched through the gravel like a moose grazing in a cheeto factory. Every second that passed Mike imagined a monstrous bear that could give a T Rex a run for its money rushing from the clouds. Then something unexpected happened. The trooper backed into something solid and cold. He turned around, and found a large semi truck with its sides ripped to shreds by claw marks and blood. Looking past the rig he could just make out a second truck with flashing emergency lights nearby.
Not knowing what else to do, Mike ran up to the cab, ripped open the door with sweaty palms, and jumped in. He was greeted with several squeals that sounded like a thousand squeak toys going off at once just daring the monster bear to eat them. Inside the sleeper were no less than three girls. Two of them were in their early twenties, scantily clad, and were speaking what sounded like Russian while the third was no older than six and clearly part of the tribe. Two prostitutes and an underage native in a truck’s sleeper. Yeah, nothing shady going on here. This was going to be one hell of a story, and a tone of paperwork if they all got out of this alive.
“Shh! I’m a police officer. Let’s not get the bear’s attention okay?” Mike whispered desperately to the prostitutes. The two Russians tried to quiet down, but were still sobbing. Oddly enough, the little girl with the shining black eyes and pigtails seemed calm and as relaxed as Mike hoped he looked.
“It’s okay sir. My brother is taking care of it.” The little girl said with a smile.
“What? You’re brother is here? Where? We need help,” Mike said that, but couldn’t help thinking that he had another civilian he needed to try and save out in that damn fog. It just gets better and better.
“Yes, he’s here. Don’t worry. The bad men can’t hurt him,” The girl crossed her arms, and nodded toward the other truck. An engine revving made Mike jump. Out from the back of the other semi’s trailer a pick up truck flew out, and rushed away into the mist. There went the other truck driver, and what was a pick up doing in the back of a standard cargo trailer? Didn’t they have special trailers meant for moving cars and trucks? This was just getting weirder and weirder by the second.
A furious roar sounded on top of the truck. Before that hideous thought could register the entire door of the cab ripped open, and monstrous paws scooped the little native girl right out of the truck. The bear was off before Mike could even aim his rifle.
“Stay here!” Shouted the Trooper to the civies as he ran after the monster. He was getting his full sprint on when a noise caught his attention from within the truck trailer. It was supposed to be a refrigerated meat truck, but instead there was some kind of cage beyond the shattered trailer doors. Mike took a closer look and sucked in a breath. There were people in there. Mostly women and kids. Holy guacamole Human Traffickers.
Before Mike could think about letting them out another roar to his left caught his attention. Priorities, these people were probably safer in the cages right now. He couldn’t have them getting lost in the fog, and then mauled by a homicidal bear. First he had a girl to save or at least kill the bear.
Mike ran off into the woods and mist following the sounds of destruction and growls. It seemed like the chase lasted centuries as the seconds ticked by, and the branches whipped across his face. He lost the trail more than once amongst the gangly mangled trees, and ravenous mist. If he wasn’t a proper country boy and been hunting since before he could walk, Mike would’ve gotten lost alone in the woods with a monster bear, and he would’ve needed saving. Still, he kept on till the trees began to thin, and ever so grudgingly the mist did as well.
The next thing Mike knew he was running on good old asphalt again. Up the road he saw dozens of headlights appearing in the mist and the chorus of screaming engines. The lights raced forward showing they were connected to motorcycles not squad cars which meant they weren’t more troopers and rangers coming to pull Mike’s ass out of nature’s frying pan. Mike twitched as a horrible thought seeped into his mind. He really, really hoped he’d never given any of these biker guys tickets. Mike wasn’t exactly in the mood for more trouble, and knowing how this night was going they’d be running guns or something even more barbaric.
“What you doing out here officer,” The closest motorcycle stopped, and it’s oversized rider shouted over the din of engines. Before Trooper Mike could answer the monster sized bearded tribesman a small face peeked out from under the biker’s leather jacket.
“Hey bro! That’s him! That’s the nice copper!” Mike felt his jaw drop. The kid was alive? Where was the bear? Wait. No really, where was the bear?
“Everyone get away from the woods! There’s a crazy bear out there and it's hungry,” Trooper Mike shouted and waved madder than an insane asylum inmate off his meds.
“Relax copper. My bro here took care of everything.” The little native girl smiled up at the tower of muscle.
“Easy officer. The bear ran off into the woods. It shouldn’t come near all these bikes and guns right?” The dark bearded youth’s brown eyes twinkled as he held up the gnarliest hand cannon revolver the Trooper had ever seen. Upon further inspection the entire mob of bikers were armed to the teeth, and literally armed for bear. Mike knew deep down that should’ve worried him.
Here he was in the middle of a heavily armed ethnic biker gang of a tribe known to be less than cordial with the state of Washington and her officers. To top it off, he was far from backup, deep in the wilderness, and it was the dead of night. He should’ve been terrified. These guys could be working with the human traffickers themselves, but all Mike could think about was now he finally had enough guns around him to feel certain that nobody near him would become bear food. Thank the Almighty God himself.
As the relief flooded Mike’s mind, a thousand questions filled the Trooper’s head, but something more important wormed its way into his consciousness. There were a couple hundred human trafficking victims trapped in a cage down the road. He really didn’t have time to question his good luck of not losing anyone else to the monster bear.
“What’s your name son? And what are all you doing out here so late? Bear hunting I hope, but more importantly I need a lift down the road right now,” Mike smiled, but felt his palms get clammy again. Oh by all that was holy let these guys not be human traffickers or enforcers for said traffickers. Backup would still be a good thirty minutes away, and Mike knew they would all hear the sirens long before they actually got here. Since he hadn’t heard them yet they had to be a long way off. Out of the bear’s mouth, and into a biker’s sites. Perfect.
“You can call me Bear officer. Thanks for looking out for my sister. You see we were out here chasing down a truck driver who had snatched her at a gas station when I wasn’t looking. We would have called the cops, but all of our cellphones ran out of batteries after we called each other. So we all came after the outsider, and ran into a massive bear instead who ran off after lightening his load so to speak. Hey, how about you hop on behind Greybeard here? We can give you a lift back to your cruiser.”
Mike smiled back at the lying through his teeth biker gang member. Bear. Yeah, Mike recognized him now. The head of the Thunderbear Biker gang on the reservation. That was one stupid trucker. Any local wouldn’t have touched the kid because nobody messed with the Bear on the Rez. This was an old fashion posy on metal horses. In the end, Mike figured it didn’t matter. The kidnapper pervert was bear chow, and his partner in crime was long gone. Besides, there was no way the Trooper was walking back alone through these woods, at night, in a fog, and with a homicidal bear on the loose. No way in hell.
Greybeard was a bald and slightly overweight biker that smelled like very expensive cologne and cigars. He was what Mike would’ve thought Santa Clause would be like if he had joined a biker gang, but he wasn’t a bad sort. Just drove a little too fast. Mike knew the man would be free of speeding tickets for the rest of his life. There were perks to helping out a State Trooper in distress.
Mike even laughed a bit as he tried to hold on to his cumbersome AR 15. It was a curvy road after all, and these speed demons were getting a kick out of having an officer of the law riding with them for a change. If Mike was honest so was he. These guys weren’t the gun running types. More the pranking, and speeding types. The adrenaline was almost completely out of Mike’s system so he was even starting to enjoy himself. It helped that the fog had rolled through letting the mountains peak through the horizon when they turned the last bin. If he didn’t know there were a couple hundred people stuffed into a cage in a tractor trailer waiting on him Mike might’ve encouraged them to draw out the ride a bit.
Finally the Trooper could see the clearing where his cruiser and the trucks, or what was left of the trucks, were abandoned. Still, there was a slight problem, the trailer full of human trafficking victims was gone. There were clear indents in the gravel where it had been, and pieces of it were still attached to the truck. Weirdest of all there were no tracks. It was like a monstrous hand had swooped in, and ripped it off. As they got closer it became obvious that part of the truck itself was missing as well showing a secret compartment that must have been meant for smuggling.
All Mike could do was rub his temples. He could hear the sirens over the mountains now, but rather than relief he felt dread. There was going to be a very lengthy, and confusing report to write about all this. One question just kept rolling inside his brain, and he ended up blurting it out loud: “What by St. Augustine's beard was going on around here?”
_______
Like what you see? Let me know in the comments if you want to read more of this story.
If you're impatient here is a short story to wet your appetite: The Massacre at St. Stephen's.
If you want try something a little different here is an article on writing and motivation: Some Advice for the Would Be Writer.
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to come back for more.
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to come back for more.
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