Blind Rage - Chapter 16

Monday, 6:54 pm

Comfort, Texas

John pulled his wife’s car into the motel parking lot and shut off the engine. A paranoid voice warned him to look around and confirm that he hadn’t been followed, but he pushed it aside.

For helping Dave escape, he’d been suspended from duty for two weeks. Considering the circumstances, the punishment could have been much worse.

Jobe never bothered explaining how he knew that John was guilty, but John didn’t bother with denials. The time code stamped on the fax could give him away, and he took the mild punishment rather than dig a deeper hole for himself.

Dave was at John’s house when he got home, and John had moved his cousin into a room at the Motor Inn to avoid drama with his wife, Sharon.

Dave couldn’t be convinced to come in to talk with Gavin or with Bert, and after putting Jobe in the hospital with a split skull, he was facing time in prison.

None of this mattered to Dave, who kept insisting that he needed a big gun.

John called up his brother-in-law Howie, who had a Winchester rifle fitted for a .458 round. The gun could literally stop a charging elephant, though Howie had never fired it at a live animal. He had bought the gun for a grizzly hunt two years prior, and then he’d spent a week staring at empty fields.

John made up an excuse of taking the gun out for target shooting, and he’d even set up an appointment at a range outside of San Antonio, in case anyone decided to check his story.

Opening the trunk, he took out the heavy aluminum gun case and a small tote bag with a pair of ammunition boxes. Just taking the weapon out in broad daylight made him feel like a criminal, and he checked the parking lot, his head bobbling around constantly.

He was making himself look guilty, but he couldn’t help it. His imagination was being unreasonable and kept conjuring scenes of Jobe jumping out from behind one of the parked cars.

Dave opened the door of his room before John knocked, waving him inside without a greeting.

“I’ve got good news, and bad news.” John set the rifle and the tote bag down on the bed. “The good news is, Jobe checked out of the hospital today, and there doesn’t appear to be any permanent damage. The bad news is, I’ve heard that the local cops are going to have an APB out for you for assaulting federal agents.”

Dave shrugged, opening the case to check the rifle. “I’ll be out of town for the next few weeks, so the cops can look all they like. Besides, I’m not planning to kill a man. We’re not planning the crime of the century here, cuz.”

“But you are a criminal now, Dave.” When his cousin offered another shrug as a reply, John gritted his teeth. “You can just sweat six years of club fed? Damn it, Dave, stop acting like a fucking hick and think! Before you tried to break Jobe and Gavin’s heads, they only wanted to ask you what you saw out at the lake.”

“If you believe that, you aren’t half as smart as I was giving you credit for.” Dave put the rifle back in the case, ignoring John’s furious glare. “I don’t think the pack following Jobe just wants to question me. If I let them take me, it’s going to be a permanent arrangement.”

John heaved a long groan of exasperation. “You sound like a fucking goober hick talking about men in black and black choppers.”

Dave laughed and shrugged again. By then, he was shrugging because he knew it was pissing his cousin off. “Aw shucks, bubba, you know alla them UFOs is real shit.” He drawled out his words and finished the joke by guffawing.

John was not amused.

Dave’s smile fell as he shook his head. He moved around the bed to pack his hiking kit. “I’m not saying the government is out to get me, John. I said if Jobe and Gavin take me into the pack, I ain’t never getting’ out.”

He straightened up to look his cousin in the eye. “They’ve already got George and Rosa. You think about what’s going on, and you tell me with a straight face that I’m being paranoid.”

John dropped his head. “Okay, maybe not. I remember Jobe calling the group his pack when he talked to his boss.”

“There, that proves I’m not crazy, and I’m not being paranoid.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but this monster in the countryside is huge.”

“Yeah, that’s a given.”

“No, just listen, Dave. There’s something else you don’t know about.”

Dave turned around to sit on the side of the bed. “What else is there?”

“There’s a major discrepancy in the description of the animal that you and Gavin saw, and the thing that John and Rosa described. You say you’re looking for a bear, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Gavin would agree with you, but George claimed that the creature he saw was a sasquatch. He described it as a big grey humanoid with a face that was ape-like in appearance. George said the creature tried to talk to him before it ran away.”

John walked to a chair under the window to sit down while he talked. “Rosa said the creature grabbed her arm and threw her into the lake. Then it went in and rescued her, and it tried to talk to her too.”

Dave started to open his mouth, and John said, “Wait, all right? I took Rosa’s call myself, so I know what she said. It tried to talk to her, and then it ran away on two feet. That’s not a bear, Dave. So either it’s two different animals—”

“Or it’s a werebear,” Dave said, his mouth drawing into a tight frown.

“That’s what I think, and—”

“If that’s what you think, then put two and two together!” Dave clenched his fists. “Jobe’s pack out on the lake is made up of every person injured by the werebear. He’s gathering the infected, and he’s hunting the werebear to collect it too.”

John wanted to argue, but the changes in George were so obvious by then. He was different, and it wasn’t just that he was bigger. He was more confident, and everyone noticed it.

More importantly, he wasn’t living at his house. He was staying on the lake with the rest of the wounded. Even if he had returned to duty making night-shift patrols, he was still under Jobe’s care at the lake.

John’s memory hit on another troubling detail, and his voice was lower as he said, “Jobe is a psychic, so maybe he has some way to control people too.”

Dave scowled at John, but there was no disbelief in his voice as he asked, “How do you know he’s psychic?”

“Because he read my mind to find out that you were going to be at Leon’s.”

“Great, so now I know why he just wants to talk. He probably needs time to get into my head.”

John said, “They want to capture the...the werebear because the government wants it taken alive. This isn’t Jobe’s private plot, okay? I heard Jobe talking to somebody from the FBI branch office named Wagner, and he requested tranquilizers from his superiors.”

Dave nodded, but he had another thought. Perhaps Jobe was the one who wanted to save the creature. His supervisor would more reasonably request that the werebear was killed, not captured.

The infected people were all loyal to Jobe, so perhaps he had some telepathic method to bring them under control.

Whatever the werebear was, it wasn’t human. Perhaps the FBI wanted to study it. But it seemed more likely that Jobe wanted to keep the creature alive and make it part of his pack, and another part of his power base.

And once Jobe “talked” to Dave, he could compel Dave to stay with the pack too.

The pack.

Dave recalled Jobe’s last comment in the field, If the werebear took your eye, you’re already a member of the pack.

He could not deny it. His body had already gone through so many changes. His senses were sharper, and his already large frame rippled with new muscle.

He was infected, but he still had his wits about him. Perhaps he could break the curse by destroying the creature who had wounded him?

It didn’t matter if killing the creature could cure him or not. It was contagious, and every person it attacked would be forced into Jobe’s pack, “for their own good.”

So if Jobe and his pack wanted to save the werebear, that made them his enemies.

John disrupted Dave’s thoughts. “Maybe you should just go into hiding and leave it up to the government to find the werebear? This isn’t something you can hunt down on your own. It’s a monster, a real life monster.”

“Yep, it is,” Dave agreed. “But he’s just meat, John. If I can get a bead on him with this gun, he’ll be a carcass.”

Clenching his fists, John asked, “And what if he reaches your dumb ass before you get the gun out?”

Dave thought it over and snorted. “I’d recommend the closed casket service, if there’s enough left to bother with a coffin.”