The book is shaping up.

The Dead Spend No Gold is almost done.

It is really pulling together.  It has been much work, and there were times when I wondered if it would match the quality of Led to the Slaughter, but I think I'm getting closer with every day.

It is a completely made up story this time, using the facts of the California Gold Rush and the Indian genocide as the framework, but with the plot completely created.  Led to the Slaughter had some stricture imposed by the real events, which was both a help and a hindrance.

This book is all mine.

I have several characters from Led to the Slaughter -- most notably, Virginia Reed who is the heroine of this series.

Anyway, as I've said before, with the help of editors many of the problems have been resolved and the book is starting to read the way I wanted it.

It will probably be hard to get as many people to read it as Led to the Slaughter, but I committed to trying. 

I'm proud of it.

A massive game of Concentration.

I hate it when people tell me how hard they work.  You work as hard as you have to work to get the job done.

I have no excuse.  Especially since nobody is making me write.

But damn, this is exhausting.

Writing a first draft is energizing and fun, almost exhilarating.

Writing a last draft is enervating and mind-draining.  I feel like I've been working in the coal mines. It's a giant game of concentration, especially when I am moving parts around.

But...

I see the book getting better before my very eyes.

I had a moment of doubt the other night and so I read the fully re-written first chapter to Linda and she seemed impressed.  She felt it was vastly improved.

That's when you know you've done something, when you re-write something that was already OK and make it better.

I'm a third of the way through this final re-write, which is behind schedule.  I've put the hours in, but I'm trying to respond to all of Bren's criticisms, which means having to create new material (that part is fun) and integrating it seamlessly with the existing stuff (that part is not fun.)

This is more like work.  Doing due diligence.  Making sure the book is as good as I can make it, and not just sloughing off when it gets hard.

I'm proud of the books that have been published so far.  I can pick them up and read them at random and see the work and time and effort I put into them.  They read well to me.

They are real books.  Professionally written.  Fast and entertaining.  Even bits of depth.

I want to be able to continue to do that.

Final rewrite doesn't mean no changes.

So I'm incorporating Bren and Lara's revisions.  Combining the best of both.

There are spots that Bren points out don't work.

So I'm dealing with them.

For instance, the mustering of the search party.  She found it boring.

So I had two choices -- either cut it, or make it interesting.

At first I cut it, then I tried to make it interesting -- by delineating the characters more.  Giving them more personality, including more plot points.

I think it worked.  I passed it by Bren, and she agreed.

Then she thought that I 'told' about the plight of the Indians when I could cover the same ground by a conversation, so I did that.  Again, it strengthened the characterizations in the process.

This along with the regular stuff of better wording, which is what I thought I'd be dealing with this draft.

I've already arranged for a final copy-edit by Lara, so I feel safe in making the changes.

I'm still learning a lot by this process.  Bad habits, if pointed out often enough, can be corrected.

I'm proud of myself for making the effort.  If there is a problem I try to address it.  No sloughing it off.

The only thing I'm not changing is the love story between two of the characters that Bren didn't like, but which I do.

But in everything that I feel that she has a point, I'm working hard to address that point.

It does makes the book better, and that is the whole point.

Editors are a great luxury.

When I see what Bren and Lara did to The Dead Spend No Gold, it's enough to make me wonder why I'm so enamored of my first drafts.

I mean, about 90% of their suggestions for improvements are right on, and the 10% I don't like is probably my fault.

I have to remember, I wrote the original words that are being shuffled around, I came up the ideas, the characters, the story and plot, the pacing, and all that.

Anyway, the editors are a great help, the kind of help I've always wanted... and thought I needed.

Oh, I always felt I got the majority of the way there to a final book, but there was always the feeling that I didn't quite have it done.  I'd have the vague feeling it could be better.  But I'd fiddle and fiddle and not get any closer, sometimes even going backward.

I don't feel that way as much now that I'm getting a couple of edits and a couple of rewrites.  (Oh, there is always the feeling something can be better -- in all things, right?)

In my earlier career, I had little or no editing.

The publishers and agents?  Forget about it.

Friends and family?  At first, a little.  (Linda is absolutely wonderful about it.)

Volunteers?  Well, sure.  But when they found out how much work it was, it usually fell through.  Not always, but mostly.  Even when they were willing, I'd feel like I was imposing after awhile.

I hired my mentor, Dwight Newton, to help me edit Deviltree way back when.   (How I don't know -- because I certainly had no money...)  I remember liking my own version more.

I think I'm much more open to changes now.  Much less defensive.

The upshot is that I suppose I should be thankful that I didn't take up my writing career again until now.  I don't need to write for the money.  Oh, I want to be professional.  I want the validation, and money would be nice.  But I don't have to have it to continue.

In some ways, since my desire to write is as great or greater than it has ever been, I may have dodged a bullet not picking up the gauntlet earlier.

I feel free to write what I want, when I want.

And I can hire editors.

Both editors are very reasonable in their costs.  I think they are doing it as much out of friendship and curiosity and just being involved in the writing game as anything.  But still...it is an expense I couldn't have done before.

I see it as an investment -- which may just turn into "hobby" expenses -- and in either case, the amount of money I'm spending isn't going to break me.

I want these books to be as good as possible without tipping over into obsessive/compulsive.  Which I can do.  I can also be intellectually lazy.  So I'm trying to find the proper balance.

Not to mention the copy-editing.  Amazing how a manuscript can be read by multiple people and still miss a simple typo.  

Anyway, I think these books are turning out better than I could have ever expected and much of that is due to having some outside -- objective -- help.

So thanks to Linda, and Lara, and Bren.  And earlier, out of kindness, Martha and Dave and Wes ... I'm going to forget people here...but thanks to all.

Tuskers. Chapter 22

First draft again, so be nice.  But if  you see anything too out of line, let me know.

Chapter 22

Peggy knew more about what was going than Mark, even though she hadn’t left the building all day.

They’d starting getting reports in the grocery store early in the morning.  Rampaging pigs.  They turned on the radio, not believing it, despite the continuing reports.  Peggy had tried calling him, to tell him about the joke, but cellphone service had died at around the same time.  Not much later, a customer had come in to say that the one cellphone tower in town had toppled over.

“Gophers,” the customer had said, knowingly, and again they had laughed at the absurdity of it.

They’d laughed about it, that is, until a customer came in bleeding from the thigh.  The tusks had hit her femoral artery, and the old woman had died in an aisle of the grocery.

They’d closed for business after that, but kept the doors unlocked in case anyone needed shelter.

“I tried to talk Justin and Brian into staying,” she said, sounding worried.  “They wanted to get home to their girlfriends.  I hope they made it.”

Mark hugged her, and didn’t tell her what he thought.  Without a .30--06, he doubted they had made it very far.

“What about Mrs. Andrews?” he asked.

“She didn’t show up for work.”

Mark didn’t say anything.  Both of them knew how unusual that was.  In fact, Mark didn’t think that anything less than the End of the World would keep the woman from showing up.  Which just meant the End of the World had indeed arrived.

About that time, they heard crashing down below them.

“Someone’s in the store,” Peggy whispered.

Mark was pretty sure what was in the store, but didn’t say anything.  He looked around the apartment.  It was pretty sparse.  They hadn’t been able to bring anything with them from Idaho, so they’d scrounged from friends and relatives.  Cast-offs, like what Mark imagined a hippie apartment must have looked at in the sixties.  A wooden wire spool table, a broken down lawn chair, a black and white TV, which was probably the last one in the entire country. 

“We ought to sell it on eBay as an antique,” he’d joked.  “Perfect for Humphrey Bogart movies.”

There were a couple of solid pieces.  A nice table Peggy’s mom had given them.  Four nice chairs.  A sofa that wasn’t too disgusting.

“Help me out,” he said, dragging the sofa to the door.  She didn’t question him, but put her slender little body to pushing while he dragged.  They got it to the top of the stairs and let go.  It slid rattling down the steps, and banged into the door.

“That’s good start,” he said.

“Not the table!” she exclaimed, when he went over to it.

“The wire spool,” he said, turning at the last second as though that had always been his plan.  She willingly helped him roll it out the door and pushed it crashing onto the sofa below.

By the time they finished, all that was left in the apartment was their bed and the nice table and chairs, and the refrigerator, which was too heavy to move.

“What more do we need?” she asked.

Food? He wanted to say.  More ammo?

She hugged him, and suddenly her body was racking with sobs.  “They’re dead, aren’t they?” she said.

Mark didn’t answer.  He’d only told her that he’d been chased by the javelinas.  He hadn’t told her what a close call it had been.  But she’d managed to intuit it anyway.

“We’re safe now,” he said.  “Unless the damn pigs have scaling ladders.”

They lay in bed, feeling like the last people on earth.  Most of the residents lived outside of town.  There was a motel at the edge of downtown, but it was pretty much the abode of the near homeless, paying most of their paychecks in weekly installments.

Mark hugged the girl he knew he’d spend the rest of his life with.  She was skinny, with small but delectable breasts.  Her incredibly thin waist.  When she put on full make-up she was as pretty as a model, and indeed, she’d been approached by scouts.  She’d laughed it off, certain it was just dirty old men, but Mark wasn’t so sure.

But she loved art.  She loved comics and Doctor Who and Adventure Time as much as he did.  He had never imagined that was possible.  A beautiful girl with a kind heart who loved Doctor Who.  It had seemed very unlikely.

So he’d waited for the dark side to emerge.  Or the phoniness 

But she was exactly how she appeared on the surface.  Only deeper.

He envisioned a nice middle class life.  Buying a house, working until they were sixty-six.  Maybe returning to Moscow some day.  Maybe some day, he’d have time to do his art.  A nice modest life.

Without pigs.  Just the normal deer and bears and such.  Wild pigs seemed un-American.

She snuggled up to him, in that way that he knew would lead to the next thing, and he ran his hand down to the indentation above her ass, which she knew would lead to the next thing, and the next thing led to the next thing and they fell to sleep in each other’s arm, spent.

Final Rewrite, The Dead Spend No Gold.

This should take about a week.

Got the edited manuscript back from Lara and I'm going through it quickly.

Most of her changes are obvious improvements.

The only place she and I seem to disagree is the use of "had" in past tenses.  She prefers to use "had" whenever appropriate.  I try to use "was" as often as possible, even if it isn't technically correct.

There are a few other places where she is formally grammatically and/or tense correct, but I feel incorrect is better.  Hard to explain, it's just a feeling. 

She's going to go through it one more time and I'm going to ask her to again put in what she thinks is proper and I'll have one more chance to decide if I agree or not.

It would probably be safer just to click acceptance, but...well, sometimes not quite right is better.

Nevertheless, going through her changes will be relatively quick.

Consolidating Bren's new critique will take much longer.  I'm going to be much more careful this time, do it page by page, make sure everything is correct before I go on to the next page.

I more or less figured out how to do it in the last quarter of the last rewrite.  Simply put the two versions consecutively paragraph by paragraph, and choose the best of both versions. 

What I noticed is that Bren's version was often more active than mine.  Now I try for an active voice -- believe me, I try -- but sometimes without knowing it I slip into a more passive voice.

I will choose a slightly less correct active voice over a technically correct passive voice just about every time.

As you can imagine, this is time consuming and rife for error.  So I just have to do it diligently, page by page. 

Each of these changes makes the manuscript slightly better, so it's worth the effort.

I'm excited to finally be finishing this.

Tuskers. Chapter 21

As before, a rough first draft.  Be generous.

Chapter 21

Barbara woke up with the sun in her eyes.  She’d gone to sleep without closing the curtains, like she normally did.  

Why’d I do that? She wondered.  Did I hit the sauce last night?

A bolt of pain up her leg brutally reminded her of what had happened.  She groaned and rolled out of bed.  She tested her footing.  The leg was swollen.  She could feel the pounding of her pulse, and it was painful, but she used the trick she had learned of pretending the pain was happening to someone else and stood up.

She fell back into bed with a cry.

She immediately pushed herself up and tried again.  This time she’d stayed standing.

Now if rampaging swine weren’t surrounding her house, she probably would have allowed herself bed rest.  But these were no ordinary pigs.  She’d seen that look in the smart one’s eyes.  The mean one.  Unless she missed her guess, he was probably trying to figure out how to get in.

She made it the bathroom and too a pain pill.  Just one, because she wanted to be alert.

It was time for her to figure out what her vulnerabilities were.

She hobbled into the living room, and immediately saw the giant cracks.  She had an old plate glass window, illegal now.  But it seemed to her the glass was clearer than shatter glass and she’d connived to get some installed.  No one could get around the law better than a career law enforcement officer.  Which why some of them became corrupt.

Her ethical failures were small ones, petty ones.

One more blow -- however they’d managed that -- and that window was going down.  She went to the garage and started hauling the scrap lumber into the living room.  She had just enough to cover the picture window but that wouldn’t take care of the smaller windows.

She pulled one of her picture frames out of the wall.  The backing was plastic.  Strong enough to hold out for a short time.  Better than nothing.

She got to work.  The more she hobbled about, the more functional her leg became. She’d no doubt pay the price tonight, but it needed to be done.

By the time she was finished, her house looked half empty.  Much of the wood furniture had been broken apart.  The pictures on the walls.  The bookshelves.

It looked like the insides of the house had exploded and attached themselves to the walls and windows.  But it looked pretty secure to her.  The little monsters would probably be able to get in eventually, but not all at once and she still had thirty-six bullets.

She went to the closet and pulled out her leather jacket.  The electricity had gone off during the night, but despite the sweltering heat, she put the jacket on.  Then, as long as she was being silly, she pinned her old badge in its old spot. 

Now she was ready.

She poured herself a stiff drink and sat down and waited.

***

A crash woke her up.  It had come from the bedroom.

She hadn’t planned it, but in addition to her gun, she reached over to the magnetic knife rack and picked the biggest knife she had.

A pig had managed to get its head through one of the wooden slats she’d nailed across the window. He was squealing, unable to get in or out.

She examined it for a few moments.  Just a pig, one of the dumb ones.  She ran the blade across its throat, and the squealing was muted and then silenced.  She left the head hanging there.

“Next?” she called out.  “Which one of you bastards wants it next?  How about your leader?  Is he too much of a coward?”

I’m off my rocker, she thought.  It wasn’t the danger; that was making her feel alive.  No, it was the loneliness.  That’s why she was having a conversation with pigs.

“Come and get it, you little bastards.  Come on!”

There was a thump in the living room and she turned and strode purposefully toward the sound.  A smaller pig had squeeze through a gap, but a bigger pig was still trying to get in.

She pulled the gun and shot the one running around the living room.  Then she walked over and slit the throat of the bigger one.  Again she left it hanging.

That’s one way to fill the gaps, she thought, and giggled.

Yep, completely off my bonkers.

And then they were trying to come in from every direction and she was too busy to giggle or tell herself she was nuts.  Too busy killing.

By nightfall, she was covered with blood.  Almost too late it occurred to her that she had no light.  She managed to find time between battles to search for her old flashlight.  She found it with the rest of her police stuff in the closet.  It still had strong batteries, and its heft was reassuring.  She’d never actually had to wield it in action and she had always been curious.  She slammed it against the next intruder, and it had landed with a satisfying thud, and it still shone bright.

Not bad, she thought.  Again she chuckled, and that’s when she knew the frequency of attacks was diminishing.  She was finding time for thought, for humor. She found some candles and lit them in every room, well away from the walls.  She always had the fixings of a fire in the fireplace, though she almost never lit it even in the coldest winter nights. (Which by Crook County standards, wasn’t cold at all.)  She hated cleaning it up afterwards, but she liked the look and smell of the wood.

She took some papers off the table, and set them on fire.  (Wait, wasn’t that her driver’s license renewal?  Oh, well.  She’d be lucky to be alive, much less driving around.)

The fire was soon roaring, and it was atavistically satisfying.  The attacks came less and less, almost as if good old-fashioned fire was driving them away.  She checked her watch and was astonished that both the day and the following night were almost over.  She’d been besieged for almost a full day.

Boar heads stuck out of every wall, as if she was some kind of mad great white hunter.

“Bwana,” she said, out loud.

She heard a scream from outside.  It sounded like the most pissed off animal she’d ever heard.  Surprisingly human sounding.  

And somehow, she knew she’d won.  That the enemy was giving up.  That his dumber followers were defying the leader.

She checked her ammo.

And she still had five bullets.

Tuskers II is a thing.

I was just experimenting, but I'm already up to 12K words.  Huh.

I've brought back a character who wisely removed himself from the danger in the first book who I really like.  I have the original protagonists, and I've created some new characters.

I'm upping the threat.  Instead of one litter of mutant pigs, its going to be a bunch of them.  (Pigs are fertile at six months, they could average 10 pigs per litter...over a couple of years, you do the math.)

I'm letting myself write it fast, though I'm also letting myself get out of the house to go to the movies and work at Linda's store.  But even if I write it one third as fast as Tuskers, it is still a torrid pace.

I'm hoping to get halfway before I break off to do the final rewrite of The Dead Spend No Gold, and then immediately get back to it.

Best of all, I'm really enjoying it. 

That's it, you know.  I'm really enjoying it. 

That's all I need to say.

The writing is enough.

When I'm writing, I don't have that many doubts.

It's only when I'm not writing that I wonder if I'm wasting my time.

When I'm writing, I'm doing my best.  It isn't as though I'm not using all my creativity and skill.  I'm lost in the story, in the telling of the story, in the characters and events.  I'm saying it in a flow, that comes from inside.  It feels good.

If I set it aside and come back to it, I see all the flaws.  It can be dispiriting.  But then, when I correct the mistakes, it can be rejuvenating.

I have decided to compartmentalize my writing.  The expectations of publication are beyond me.  I simply can't seem to affect that one way or the other.

But the writing I can do.

So that's what I'm going to do.  Just write.  Without any expectation.  Just do it.

I wasn't sure at first if that would be enough, but the more I write, the more satisfied I am with writing.  I enjoy it.  It's uplifting.  It fulfills me.

That's enough.

Tuskers. Chapter 20

As always, remember this is a rough first chapter draft and be kind.

Chapter 20

When Pederson came to, the only thing that hurt was his little finger.  The air bag had exploded out the front window, and apparently also broken his smallest digit.

How did that happen? He wondered, dazed.

Somehow, he had ended up on the right side of the car.  He must have unlatched his seatbelt earlier, in some unconscious effort to get away.  He reached for the passenger door handle and winced at the pain.  He used his left hand instead and tumbled out onto the road.  He was disoriented for a moment, then got to his hands and knees.  Again a shooting pain in his finger made him cry out.

He staggered to his feet, this time tucking his finger away.  He reached into the cab.  The glove box opened at a slant, getting caught halfway down on the right side, but it was enough for Pederson to reach in with his left hand and pulled out the first aid kit.  He immobilized his finger, and immediately it stopped hurting as much, and he realized that half the pain was coming from the anticipation and now that it was safely wrapped his brain was relenting.

The second thing he looked for was his gun.  He’d had it on the seat next to him.  But search as he might, he couldn’t find it anywhere. 

The bow and arrow box was lying in the middle of the road, as if beckoning him.  He walked over and picked it up, and while he was at it, kicked the other items out of the road and over the side of the cliff, like a good citizen. 

Just in time, for as he was finishing up, he heard sirens approaching.  Two fire trucks came swerving around the corner, followed by a cop car.  The first truck slowed down, but he waved them on, and the fire trucks kept going.  The policeman stopped.

“You OK, Mr. Pederson?”

Pederson recognized Steve Altman, one of the few other citizens of the valley who also knew Pederson’s past.  He’d been a security guard in Silicon Valley.  He’d gotten in trouble once for falling asleep on the job and Pederson had gone to bat for him, saving his job.  So when the cop got a job locally, it hadn’t been hard to convince him to stay quiet.

“I’m good, Steve.  There is nothing you can do here.  I’ll call the tow truck.”

“You sure?”

Pederson nodded.  “What’s going on?”

“The Silverstein’s house is on fire,” Altman said.  “It sounds bad.”

“You better get going then.”

The policeman nodded and waved and accelerated away. 

It wasn’t until he was long gone before Pederson realized the other casualty of the wreck was his cellphone, which was broken right down the middle.

He calculated the distances.  He figured it was six miles to his house by road, and three miles overland.

He glanced back at the truck.  It was totaled.  Most of the supplies inside had survived.  If someone was desperate enough to steal them, they were welcome to have them.  The supplies had been overstock, really.  Just stuff he’d bought to fill his truck because he had the room and the money. 

He stepped to the side of the road.  There was a steep cliff, about fifty feet high, then a few rolling hills, and then the bottom of the valley. If he headed up the dry creek from there, it was smooth sailing to his place.

There was the outline of a deer trail to his left that he thought he could probably negotiate and he started that way.  Then at the last second, he turned around and grabbed the box with the bow and arrows.

It wasn’t an easy descent.  He was starting to feel his age.  His legs were getting wobbly.  His right hand was pretty useless in stabilizing him.  And the box was bulky.  Finally, he let the box slide the final few yards, and slid down on his butt.  He hit a rock on his tail bone on the way down, and gasped for breath for a few minutes, while the excruciating pain shot through his back.  He almost passed out.

The pain eventually passed, leaving a dull ache. 

He lay on his hip and opened the box.  Taking out the pieces one by one, and examining them.  He unfolded the instructions.  His engineer’s brain quickly made sense of them, and he was able to assemble to bow without much trouble. 

He stood up.

Stringing it was a bit harder, not because he didn’t know what to do but because of his diminishing energy and strength and his immobile finger. 

There were twelve arrows in the quiver, which he thought was pretty generous.  Everything had a high tech gleam to it, a pleasing design, and his Silicon Valley persona appreciated the beautiful functionality.  This wasn’t one of those high priced bullshit objects that was made just for looks and brand name bragging, this weapon was the real deal.  He could feel it.

He put an arrow on the string and tried pulling it back.  Oomph.  The pull was a little much.  He perused the instructions again, adjusted the bow, and was able to pull the string the second time.  But it was awkward.

He unwrapped the bandage around his right hand, almost crying out from the pain, and rewrapped it so that his first two fingers were free.  Now he could pull the bow much easier, and though it was tough to get full extension, he knew that the more powerful the pull, the more force the arrow would have, and the greater distance.

He took aim at what he gauged to be an eight-inch circumference fir tree about twenty feet away and let go the arrow.  He jerked it, and the arrow went flying far to the left.  He marked the location of the arrow and tried again.  This time, he released the arrow as if he was pulling the trigger of a gun. 

It was inordinately pleasing that he missed by only a few inches.

He sensed the gun analogy was the right one.  Pull the string, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and release…

He tracked down the two arrows, put one back on the bowstring and the other in the quiver and started off.

***

 

It was only a few hundred yards along that he realized he’d made an enormous and avoidable mistake.  It was a hot Arizona afternoon and he was sweating profusely.  And getting thirstier with every step.

Like an idiot, he’d left gallons of bottled water in his truck.

He contemplated going back, but was pretty sure that he’d have a hard time making it up the cliff, certainly with the bow.  He wasn’t willing to relinquish the bow.  Better to stay on the flats and just make a beeline for his house and barn.  A couple more miles was all.  He should make it in less than an hour, even with the uneven terrain.

But he was slowing down.  Maybe two hours, he thought.

***

He sat on the side of the trail, his head down.  How long had he been sitting here?  Maybe it will take three hours to get home.

And unbidden came the thought, Maybe never.

Big Stanford engineer brain, Silicon Valley Master of the Universe.  Forgetting water.  What any dumb cow would have thought of first.

***

The pig probably did him a favor. 

Pederson’s thinking had been confused for a while.  He wasn’t even sure he was heading in the right direction anymore.  He found himself sitting in the dirt as often as he was stumbling around.

A single threatening grunt, and his brain focused instantly.  He saw that the sun had descended closer to the horizon.  It was past noon.

He stood up, threading the arrow with shaking hands.  Where had the grunt come from?  Then the pig did him another favor.  It grunted again, just ahead of him on the trail.

The pigs came around the turn and stopped, seemingly as surprised to see him as he was to see them.  There were four of them, but only one of them mattered.

Pederson recognized Himmler.  One of the smart ones.   One of the mutants, the one with the prissy little mustache.  The javelina examined him, his eyes taking in the bow as if he understood what it was.  He grunted, and the other pigs moved forward, surrounding Himmler, giving him cover and depriving Pederson of a clear shot.

Another grunt, which sounded to Pederson’s ear very much like a command, and the three pigs started forward.  But Pederson ignored them.  He was likely to get only one shot off, maybe two if he was lucky.  He wasn’t going to be able to kill them all.

But he had an instinct that he didn’t have to kill them all.  He only had to kill Himmler and the others would be just pigs, afraid of men, mostly harmless.

When the three attackers were half the distance, Pederson finally had a shot.  Himmler sensed what was happening too late and turned to run, but by doing so he turned sideways.  Pederson had been aiming for the chest, and was going to miss by a foot to the left, but by turning broadside, Himmler had made himself a bigger target.

The arrow thudded into his neck.

The pig squealed, and his scent glands released, filling the clearing with the stink of death.  It thrashed, turning over and over again, which only drove the arrow deeper.  It didn’t just slowly subside in movement, it stopped in mid-motion and collapsed.

The other three pigs had turned around.  They looked around as if confused, saw Pederson pulling a second arrow out his quiver, and they turned to run.

Pederson released the second arrow, knowing he’d probably missed, but angry enough to try.  To his amazement, he caught a retreating pig in the rear end and it tumbled head over heels and lay still. 

One less to worry about, Pederson thought.

He couldn’t dislodge the arrow from Himmler.  It had apparently embedded itself in bone.  He was able to draw the arrow out of the soft tissue of the second dead pig, though. 

He went on, his thirst forgotten for a moment, feeling pretty good about himself.  The mighty hunter.

That feeling only lasted until the next corner.  Waiting for him was another dozen pigs, and standing thirty feet back was a single pig, who regarded him with calculating eyes.   This one had hair hanging down past its mouth, like a Fu Manchu mustache.

Genghis, Pederson thought.

Then he thought, Shit.

He raised his bow, knowing it was hopeless.

The javelinas must have heard the whine of the motorcycle first, because they started milling about in panic, despite the commanding grunts of the mutant pig. 

Then Pederson heard it.  The motorcycle went whizzing past Genghis and bowled over a couple of the smaller javelinas, and roared up to Pederson’s side.  He stopped and grinned and through the dirt and grime, Pederson recognized Barry Hunter.

“Hop on, neighbor,” the man said.

Pederson had never felt so happy to see another person than at that moment.  He put the arrow in the quiver and climbed behind his rescuer, holding the bow with one hand and the grabbing Hunter around the waist with the other.

The motorcycle accelerated away, weaving dangerously for few moments, almost giving the pigs a chance to catch them.  Then the pigs were left behind, obscured by a cloud of dust.

Have started Tuskers II and other things.

I've started writing Tuskers II but at a very moderate pace.  The Tuskers experience was pretty crazy, and not something I'd try to duplicate.  Unless, of course, it comes on me in a frenzy like that, then how could I refuse?

Thing is, I'm staring at the computer for so long, my eyes are having a hard time.  If I make the mistake of getting up and driving somewhere it's like my eyes can't adjust.  I have to remind myself to lay down and close my eyes for like fifteen minutes to let them to shift back.

I saw a documentary on the Woodmans last night, who are (were) artists.  And it made the case that artists are so focused they are dysfunctional in the real world.

To get away from my computer, I've been going to the Bookmark and helping out there.  Linda got like 450 books yesterday, for instance, which is like having a Volkswagen beetle bug land on your table.  She feels pretty overwhelmed at times.

I'm a whiz at filing.  I'm quick, and decisive.  My goal is to get every book we have out on the floor if possible and to find ways to do that.

Plus, I kind of enjoy it.  And I get to talk to people.

I could go to my own store to talk to people, but that become more intensive and interrupts the rhythm of my employees   My own store is humming along, thanks to Cameron and Matt, so I prefer to leave them to it.




I'll be doing the final rewrite of The Dead Spend No Gold next week.  My two editors were supposed to just sort of copy-edit this time, but they found some more substantial things for me to do.

So I'm not one to turn down possible improvements.

I'll have to be very careful this time.  Not just click acceptances, and not just mash the two edits together.  I need to take each page and be sure it is completely done before moving on.

I'm going to ask Lara to do one more quick clean edit.  Nothing but copy-editing.

I think there is a point of diminishing returns in rewrites.  The book was good, it got better, I'm hoping it will get better again.  That's it.

Tuskers. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

The SUV started smoking from the engine first, but then I felt the heat and smelled the flames from beneath.  The sparks had set fire to the oils beneath the car.  The wheel rims were also getting off kilter and the car was wobbling.  The car wasn’t going much faster than a walk now, and the pigs were sprinting ahead in their excitement and then circling back.

It wouldn’t be long now.  All I’d accomplished by my gambit was to get farther away from shelter.

I stopped the car.  I had to do something.  It was either burn to death or be eaten by pigs, and I wasn’t sure which was worse. 

I guess panic will decide, I thought, in those last moments of life.

No, fuck that.  I wasn’t through.  I looked out the back window.  The trailer carrying the motorcycle had four feet high walls and was two feet from the ground.  A good six feet, altogether.  I doubted a pig could jump that high.  The sides had wide slates, but they were metal, and it looked to me like the animals probably wouldn’t be able to do much more than push their snouts into the gaps.

If I could climb back there, I’d be in a cage, but at least I’d be away from the fire.  I opened the glove box, praying there was a glass punch.  There it was, a little screwdriver shaped tool.  I turned around and pushed the punch against the back window.  It shattered. 

The javelinas went crazy when I poked his head out.  The gap between the head of the trailer and the SUV was wide enough that the pigs could get a feet and a half in, on either side.

But I realized there was a two-foot wide part in the middle where they couldn’t get to me.

Never had I regretted my two-hundred pound body more than now.  But…well the weight was actually pretty well distributed.  So I’d always told myself, and now it was being put to the test.  No doubt, I’d lost a good ten or fifteen pounds over the last few days.  Which just reminded me how hungry and thirsty I was.

The heat was getting uncomfortable.  There was nothing for it but to try.  I squirmed my way out, barely able to squeeze through the window.  In my wiggling, I was moving from size to size, and I felt a nip on one arm, and then the other.  One of the pigs got a good grip on my shirt and started pulling me out of the safe zone.  I held on tight to the frame of the trailer, and the shirt ripped before I my grip broke. 

I made it the rest of the way and tumbled headfirst into the trailer. 

The bike was in the exact middle, and the safest place for me quickly proved to be sitting on the actual seat.

The fire in the car was really taking off now, sending sputtering oils into the air, landing and burning through my shirt and trousers.  I’d saved myself a few minutes at best. 

I looked down at my hands.  I still had the keys gripped tightly against my palms, so tightly that there was a white imprint.  There were two keys, I realized.  One of them smaller than the other.

Jesus, when was the last time I drove a motorcycle?

Here’s where I got really lucky.  I mean, I knew I was lucky all along, but this was the thing that really saved me.  The bike rack was such that the wheels were off the ground.  When I found the ignition switch, the wheels turned freely.  I experimented with clutch and the handle grips, and it all came back to me.   I was pretty sure I could do it.

I unsnapped the bike from the rack.  I had to turn the bike around, and I levered it on its rear tire and managed to maneuver it so it was facing the back.  All that separated me from the road was a single latch in the middle of the back of the trailer.

I revved the engine.  I was reaching over for the latch, when I saw the leader of the javelinas come trotted from the side, grunted what sounded like orders.  The pigs massed behind the gate, and I realized I’d land right in the middle of them.

It was only going to get worse, I realized.  I sprung the latch and shot out of the trailer, flying over most of the assembled animals, and landing on the backs of a couple more, and then I was on the asphalt and flying away.

I heard whooping and hollering and realized it was me.

It was the most exciting moment of my life.

Bias confirmation.

This is probably the very definition of bias confirmation, but I always check on Shelf Awareness to see which bookstores are closing and why.

And it seems to me that, almost every time (I'd say every time, but never speak in absolutes...never) the bookstore will say something along the lines of:

"We did everything right.  We served coffee and had signings and promoted events and everyone just loved us..."

It's never:  "We're lazy bastards who just sold books, never promoted, and brought coffee to work in a thermos."

Now it is possible that the lazy bastards who close are so under the radar that they don't deserve an announcement in Shelf Awareness.

But I chose to believe that bookstores who take care of business survive, and bookstore who somehow believe their job is to be a community center providing free services and labor and space intensive activities have made the job so difficult for themselves that they quit from burnout or lack of money or both.

Like I said, admittedly confirming my bias.

The latest failure was on there today.  "Coffee Beans and Books."

I probably should just leave that one alone -- let the title itself speak for itself.

But really, when "coffee" comes before "books" in your store name, there is something fucked up about that.

Tuskers. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

  

“We have a spare set of keys, don’t we?” I asked.

Jenny went to the junk drawer and rummaged around.  She lifted a key, and with a wrinkled nose, handed it to me.  “I think that is the right one.”

“Think?”

“Pretty sure…”

It would have to do.  If I had time, I intended to grab her purse along the way and it might be a moot problem. 

I wasn’t actually as scared as I probably should have been.  We had seen very few javelinas about.  It seemed unlikely they could magically appear out of nowhere before I was able to get away.  Which made me wonder.  Why?

Old Razorback was smarter than that.  What did he know that I didn’t?

Only one way to find out.  My spear was as sharp as I could make it.  My large butcher knife was in my belt, at my side, and I was just hoping I wouldn’t poke myself with it. 

“One last thing,” I said.  I took her by the hand and led her upstairs.  I handed her the hammer and the container of roofing nails.

“As soon as I’m gone, I want you to nail this sheet of metal to the frame of the door.  Use a nail every couple inches, don’t be stingy.  I’m thinking even old Razorback might have a hard time getting in.”

“What about Aragorn?” she asked.

“Leave him outside the door.  He’ll let you know when they’re coming.  Might be able to take out a few of them.  Right Aragorn?  Eh, Strider?”

I knelt down and the dog nearly leaped into my arms.  “Take are of her,” I whispered.

I looked up at my wife, who had tears in her eyes.  I knew she wouldn’t leave Aragorn outside, but I had to try.

We hugged and kissed and I wanted nothing more at that moment to guide her backward to the bed and make love to her one more time.  But I broke away, and started down the stairs.  She followed me.

“I mean it,” I said, without turning around.  “Nail yourself in before dark.”

“I promise.”

Aragon followed us as far as the entryway to the front door, then he stopped and looked agitated.  He barked once, and I turned and motioned at him to stop, which being the apparently well-trained dog he was, he did.

There wasn’t a lot of planning in what I was doing.  Open the door, run for the car, (snagging my wife’s purse along the way), drive the car to town and get help.  That was it.  So easy, and so hard.

I decided against a last goodbye because I was certain if I turned around and hugged my wife, I wouldn’t leave.

I opened the door quietly, and walked quickly down the walk.  I grabbed the purse, and kept going, trying to ignore the parts of Peter still strewn about.  For some reason, the swine had left his head untouched, and it was swelling in the heat, looking ready to burst.

I made it to the car without any trouble, looked in Jenny’s purse, found the keys and started it.  I looked down at the gas gauge and it was full.  I couldn’t believe how easy it was.  Why had we been cowering in the house all this time when all we had to do was this?

I started driving and hadn’t gone more than few feet before I realized something was wrong.  The car moved sluggishly, and almost seemed to swerved sideways, and then jerk the to the other side.

I dare to roll down the window.  I looked down and saw two things.  The first was that the tires I could see were completely shredded.  The second was a wave of javelina coming down the street toward me.

I got out, but instead of running to the house, I sprinted toward Peter’s Toyota SUV, which was parked at the curb of the street.  I couldn’t see the tires, and I was pretty sure what I’d find, but I had to see.

The car was low to the ground, the tires so cut and sliced, the car was almost on the wheel rims.  I didn’t stop, because the wave of javelinas was coming fast.  I grabbed the door, praying it wasn’t locked, and slipped inside.  I slammed the door as the first of the pits crashed into it, and then another.  I could actually see the dents from the inside. 

The pigs milled about the car, and then one got on its hind legs and looked into the driver’s window, and what I saw then chilled me more than anything else I’d seen.

The eyes in this javelina were intelligent, just like Razorback.  It seemed almost amused.  So it isn’t just a single pig, I thought.  Where there were two, there were probably multitudes.  And if they could communicate, who knew what they could accomplish?  Technology was great, but native cunning could go a long way.  Especially against a prey who was fat and complacent, who hadn’t had to fend for itself in generations.

Man had always prided itself on being different, but maybe it was only a difference of degrees, and the gap between the degrees had just shrunk.

Meanwhile a human of perhaps just a little above average intelligence was trapped.

I knew that cars would drive even on the raw wheel rims.  Wasn’t good for them, would probably wreck them for the future, but there was no future if I didn’t get out of here.  I figure the car could go for a ways.  But without the keys, I couldn’t even do that.

I searched the glove box, and the windshields.  Nothing.  I sat back and huffed in frustration.  Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. 

Only good then was that I didn’t think the pigs could get to me as long as I was in the SUV.  They wouldn’t have an angle on the glass, so brute force wouldn’t do it.

As I was thinking that, feeling just a tiny bit safe, I saw the intelligent pig go to the side of the road and pick up a rock with his teeth.  It swung his neck and the rock came flying toward me and slammed against the door, just inches below the door.

I swear the pig was measuring the distance.  If it was a human, he have raised his fingers and blurred his eyes and tried to measure.  It tossed a second rock and it smashed against the window, but by some miracle didn’t shatter.

But I know that when it did, the whole window would give way.  They were designed that way, to break into tiny pieces.

I ran my hand along the bottom of the seat.  Don’t know what compelled me to do that, but the instinct was right.  I felt the keys, tucked into the folds of the seat.

I pulled them out and tried the bigger of the two keys, and the car started.  I started driving away, and the car groaned as if it was alive, the motor whined, and I could see sparks shooting from the tire rims. 

I had to turn, and when I turned the steering wheel, the car just kept sliding forward on the asphalt for a few yards, sending up even more sparks.  When it came to full stop, I tried again, steering a little less abruptly, and the rims took hold and the car slowly turned. 

The javelinas had just watched at first, but as I headed downhill, they began to follow.  They didn’t even have to run at the pace I was going, just trot behind.  The smart pig loped along beside me, and when I caught its eye, it seemed to leer at me.

Must be my imagination, I thought.  Pigs don’t wink, do they?

The car picked up speed as we headed down, but the minute we hit an upslope, it began to slow, losing traction.  I barely made it over the hump, and when I saw the next hill, I tried to accelerate, despite the alarming amount of sparks it sent off.

The engine was laboring, and was edging into red.  Unlike my wife’s car, this SUV had only a quarter of a tank to start with, and the extra friction seemed to be drawing down on that quickly.

The pigs were still keeping pace and I was a long way from town.

Tuskers. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I tried the tap water with some trepidation, but it still flowed.  We washed off the whining dog as best we could.  I felt the tag around its neck and checked it.

“Welcome to our humble abode, Aragorn,” I said to it, who with the name became a ‘he.’   The dog wagged his tail at the sound of his name.

We fed him a can of stew, the best we could do, being a non-pet household.  Aragorn went to the corner of the living room carpet -- about as far from the four walls of the house as it could get -- and went to sleep.

“Where is the help?” Jenny asked, which was the same thing I was thinking.  “Police, firemen?  Shit, where’s the army?”

“Watch your mouth, woman,” I growled, and then smiled. 

She didn’t return the smile.  “No, really.  What the hell.  A few machine guns and they could take care of this problem.”

“Unless we’ve been cut off,” I said.  “Cellphone towers, cables, everything.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Well…” I raised my hands in mock surrender.  “But think about our little neck of the woods.  We’re completely isolated.  No phone, no Internet.  They’ve got us trapped.  Maybe it’s more widespread than we’ve been thinking.”

“Thinking?  I wasn’t thinking anything.  I just thought our neighborhood javelinas got out of control.  Until…until I saw that beast.”  She shuddered.

“Yeah, old Razorback is a sight to behold.  He’s a mutant, or something.  But…he still has hoofs, not opposable thumbs.  I don’t think he’s anything but a very, very…very smart pig.”

“Smarter than us, apparently,” she said.

I started laughing, and she looked sheepish at first and then joined me.  Gallows humor, maybe, but it felt good.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“Stay put, like the man said.  Though…”

“Though what?”

“Well, I heard somewhere that in times of disaster the best thing to do is move around.  Get out of the trouble area…”

“You think its that bad?”

“Nah,” I said, sounding more cheerful than I felt.  “How could it be?  They’re just pigs…”

***

We didn’t really need the candles.  We went to bed almost immediately after dark.  We were only under the covers for a few moments before we heard whining and scratching at the door.  We let Aragorn in, and he jumped up onto the foot of the bed and lay down between our feet.

Neither of us objected.  It felt comforting to have the animal there.  Besides, I thought, it’s the best early warning system we could have.

Strangely, nothing happened.  Not even a grunt or a snort.  The javelinas left us alone that night.  But when we woke up in the morning, the cloud was full of smoke.  It was coming from every direction, as if every other house in the subdivision was on fire.

I’d loved the isolation when we first got here.  Now I was regretting it.

We made a cold breakfast, deciding to eat as much of the perishables as quickly as we could.  Aragorn whined and wound around our feet, nearly tripping us more than once, before Jenny suddenly cried out, with a slap to the head.

“He needs to go potty!”

We looked around us, helplessly.  I took him to the garage.  The dog looked at me doubtfully, but eventually found a spot in the corner and did his business.  After that he was friskier and friendlier than ever.  As if he’d forgotten there was ever a danger.

“You know what?” Jenny said, after giving the dog a hug.  “After this, I’d like to get a dog. I know you’re worried about your garden…”

I pointed out the back window.  “You mean that garden?  I agree, Jenny, let’s get a dog.  And a cat, too, dammit.”

“Maybe we can keep…” she suddenly stopped, as if realizing by saying it out loud she was admitting the Underwood’s were dead.

“Yeah, maybe,” I answered.

Once or twice during the morning, Aragorn growled, and we’d stiffen and get up and look out the window fearfully.  But each time it was a single javelina, or a small pack.

It all seemed very strange.  We were now in the second day, without hearing from the outside.  By now, the whole world should have been alerted that something was happening in our little corner of Arizona.

Maybe they had, I thought with sudden chill.  Maybe everyone else has already been saved.  Maybe they’ve just forgotten about us.

Hamilton wouldn’t let that happen. 

With that thought, I froze.

No…he wouldn’t let that happen.  So that meant that something has happened to Hamilton, and if it could happen to the Animal Control officer, it could happen to anyone.  It could happen to us.

I knew at that moment that it was a mistake to stay another day. 

***

“I need a broom handle,” I said.

Jenny didn’t question my request.  She went to the pantry and returned with a broom.  My last birthday present to her had been hiring a local maid service.  Too late, I’d discovered that just made Jenny madly clean the house the day before the cleaners showed up.  No amount of pleading would keep her from doing it.  “Just a little touch up,” she’d say.  “I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

I broke off the broom end, hobbled to the kitchen, and tried several knives on the wood before finding one sharp enough to do the job.  I whittled the end to a sharp point in short order, the panic in my arms and fingers carving long slivers out of the wood.

Jenny and Aragorn watched me for a while. 

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a spear,” I said.

“I can see that,” she said, when I didn’t look up.  “Why are you making a spear?”

“Just extra protection,” I said.

“Dear husband of mine,” she said, and I finally looked up.  “When you won’t look me in the eye, I know you’re lying.  That’s always been your tell.  I’m telling you this so that you’ll realize how serious I am, giving up the little advantage I’ve had over you all these years, knowing when you’re lying.  I will ask again, why are you making a spear?”

“I need to get help,” I said.  “Razorback is just toying with us.  He can get in any time. All he has to do is send one of his minions headfirst into the glass, and he’s in.  How long will our bedroom door hold up?  How are we going to defend ourselves with knives and a hammer?”

“I agree,” she said, completely surprising me.  “But…”

I looked up from my whittling again.

“Why does it have to be you?  I can drive a car just as fast as you can…faster, frankly.”

“Nope,” I said.  “That’s not the way it’s going to be?”

“Why not?  Why should you do the dangerous thing?  Because you’re a man?”

“No!” I shouted, and I could see she was taken aback.  I’d rarely yelled at her during our marriage.  Moreover, I usually acceded to her demands.

“It isn’t about being a man or a woman.  It’s about being you…and me…”

She didn’t say anything, just waited for me to continue.

“Because without me…you’ll still be all right.” She started to object, and I held up my hand.  “Oh, you’d be sad, I know that.  You might be devastated, but you know what?  You’d get on with life.  You’re tough, sensible.  It will hurt, but there is still life in you.”

“What about you?  You’ve got as much…”

“No,” I said, firmly.  “Without you, I’m lost.  I’ve always known it.  I’ve dreaded it.  Every day of my life with you I’ve been thankful you plucked me out of my hermitage…” Again she opened her mouth to object, and I put my hands on her lips to shush her.  “It’s true.  You may not believe it, but I’ve always known.  I don’t want to be alone, Jenny.  And that’s what would happen.”

“You don’t know that,” she finally said.

“Yeah…I do.”

She didn’t say anything more, because we both knew, as fucked up as it may seem, I was right.

Tuskers. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

The pigs are herding me, Mark realized.  Away from his apartment, away from Peggy.  He stopped and loaded the rifle, then poured the rest of the bullets into his pocket, where he could get at them easier.

Two can play at that game, he thought.

Every time they got in his way, he lifted the rifle and fired.  He hit his target every time.  He’d always been a good shot.  He spent hours in an old cinderblock building at the edge of town, wearing earmuff, shooting at targets on wires, pulling them pack, checking his score.

He was just lucky this rifle was miraculously zeroed in.  Either that or it was miraculously compensating for his being off target. 

He smiled grimly.  He still couldn’t believe these pig creatures could hurt him.  But he’d seen the tusks on the first one he killed, so he was wary.

Then he stumbled across his boss.

The javelinas were herding him into the mouth of an alley.  He stood his ground, sensing that if they managed to corner him in there, he was done for.  He shot a charging javelina and reloaded in seconds.  He was getting pretty good at it already.

His pocket was half empty of ammo, but all he wanted to do was make it home.

He started to walk away from the alley, when he saw the body just a few feet in.  That was shocking enough, but when he’d saw the red coat, he nearly buckled at the knees.

Joe Sanders was a loud, garish kind of guy.  But nice as could be.  He wore a red sports coat to work.  Called it his uniform.  His signature look. 

Now his face was as red as his coat.  His trousers were red too.  His viscera spread out all over the alley was red, and yellow and…

Mark leaned over and threw up.

A javelina took the opportunity to charge.  He stood and blew the creature backward.  Then he keep marching toward the pack, firing and reloading, firing and reloading, killing one of the pigs with every step.

When there was only two left, they bolted. 

Mark turned around and walked straight for his apartment, gun at the ready.  Twice more he saw one of the javelinas, twice more he fired and hit. 

His pocket was no longer jingling with bullets when he reached the grocery store.   Peggy worked there, and got off a couple of hours before he did.  They’d gotten a sweet deal on the apartment, so much so that even though both of them weren’t earning much more than minimum wage they were managing to save money. 

The money was for sending him to art school, or so Peggy thought.

But the money was really for buying a ring and getting married.  That’s what Mark thought.

The door at the side of the grocery was unlocked, and he entered warily.  Then realized there was no way the damn pigs could turn the nob.  He stopped and counted the bullets left.  Fourteen out of fifty.  How was that possible?  It seemed to him that he’d rarely missed his target.  Just how many of those monsters were there?  Why did they keep throwing themselves at him?

Just what the hell was going on?

He looked down at his trousers.  They were his work pants, the only pants he owned that weren’t jeans.  The bottom was covered with mud and blood and viscera.  How was he going to explain that to Peggy?

He tromped up the stairs and tried to open the door.  It was locked.  He was stunned.  It was never locked.

“Peggy?” he said, in a low, wondering voice.

The door flew open and she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him in.  Not until the door slammed shut, and lock was turned, did she throw himself into his arms.

“Thank God, you’re home.”

And Mark knew he didn’t have to explain the blood and the mud and the viscera.

TUSKERS II and TUSKERS III

So I've decided to write TUSKERS II and TUSKERS III.

Take the story to the logical conclusion.  Write them fast, write them fun.

Meanwhile, I've had a couple of legit criticisms to TUSKERS.

1.) The Tuskers aren't monstrous enough.

2.) The shift between 1st and 3rd person is distracting. 

 So I'm going to try to fix those problems in the second draft.

Any of you guys have any other constructive criticisms?

Tuskers. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

 “Three jars of olives?” Jenny asked.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I just grabbed everything I could.

She laughed and came over and gave me a hug.  “I know.  I was just teasing.  I can’t believe how brave you were to go down there.”

“Brave…or hungry,” I said, smiling.

In the morning, everything looked less terrifying.  From our bedroom window, there wasn’t a javelina in sight, and there were no sounds from downstairs.

“I don’t think they made it inside,” I said.  “I’m going to check.”

“No!” Jenny cried out.  “Stay here.  Let’s stick to our plan, just wait it out.  I love olives, you know.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.  I cracked to door open before she could protest again.  I stuck my nose out and sniffed.  No pig smell.  No grunts.  No banging and crashing.  I still didn’t think they were canny enough to lay a trap, though after last night’s events, I wasn’t so sure.

I hurried downstairs, being as quiet as I could, the heavy flashlight in my hands despite the brightness of the day.

I stepped into the kitchen, flashlight raised.  The room was empty.  It occurred to me then that I could maybe find another weapon.  I opened the drawer next to the oven.  There is was, the massive butcher knife that I’d given to Jenny one Christmas and which, as far I knew, had never been used.  All the sharper for it, I thought.  I transferred the flashlight to my left hand and grabbed the knife.  Only then did I approach the sliding glass doors.

The crack ran nearly the entire perpendicular length of the door.  Just outside lay a dead pig, its neck broken by the impact. 

I didn’t recognize the patio or the backyard.  Everything was broken beyond repair.  The umbrella, which had been over the table, was in shreds.  Every flower and bush was pulled out of the ground, and though I could still see hints of green in the lawn, most of it was torn up.

There was pig shit everywhere. 

“That’s fucking intentional,” I said aloud, somehow more offended by this than anything else I’d seen.  “You creepy animals.”

I put my finger to the crack.  The door was double paned, and the crack was on the outside one.  I suppose I should have been reassured, but I wasn’t.  How long before old Razorback convinced a few more of his followers to commit hari kari?

 I heard a sound behind me and whirled, knife raised.

Jenny was staring at the chaos outside with wide eyes. 

“Whatever did we do to them?” she asked, sounding offended.

“Seems to me we provided them with a daily banquet,” I said.  “A veritable buffet.”

She was shaking her head, absently picking up the dropped containers of food.  When her hands were full, she pulled out a fresh trash bag from below the sink, and dropped the food inside.  She went to the pantry and kept filling it.  Then went and got another bag and started filling it.

Without a word, I picked up the first bag of food and took it upstairs to the bedroom.  While I was there, I filled the bathtub with water; not to drink, but because so far the pigs had been one step ahead of us and I just didn’t know what they were capable of.  I didn’t know how they could cut off the water, but that’s what worried me -- not knowing.

When I went back downstairs, Jenny was looking thoughtfully through the knives, one by one, hefting them.  A little bit of a chill went down my spine, but I didn’t say anything.  I just wished we could do better for weapons.  I’d always been anti-gun and it burned my ass that the gun nuts might have been right.  About Armageddon, at least.

With that thought in mind, I went to the garage.  Our garage was full of junk, which was the unfortunate reason for the car being parked out of reach outside.  But it was my chance to find something useful.  All this junk was saved for some reason, I thought.  For the day we needed it. Well, todays the day.

But it turns out none of the junk was much use in a pig apocalypse. 

A Porkolypse, I thought, and smiled.  A Hamaggeden.

I found a hammer, and decided that it made more sense as a weapon than a flashlight, especially considering I wouldn’t be smashing the bulb and making the flashlight useless.

There was a sheet of corrugated metal against one wall, from when I’d thought of building a shed.  That was when I was still thinking like a Bendite, and believed I’d need to protect my equipment from the snow.

I wrestled it into the house and took it upstairs and leaned it against the bedroom wall.  Then I went to the garage again and rummaged around until I found some nails.  They were roofing nails, but there was a full container of them and I thought they’d do the job.

Meanwhile, Jenny had managed to get most of the food upstairs.

“You think we’re going to be here for months?” I asked.

“Never hurts to be prepared,” she said cheerfully.   “Or maybe I just want a choice in my meals.”

I trotted down the stairs, and at the bottom it suddenly occurred to me what I’d just done.  I hadn’t walked down the stairs -- no worse, I thought, hadn’t trudged down the stairs.  I had nearly skipped down the stairs, humming a happy tune.  I shook my head at the mystery of it, and went back into the garage and started just piling boxes on the floor, making a total mess of things, just looking for something useful for the next few nights.

I was sure the authorities would rescue us by the end of the day, or at least by tomorrow.  But if we had to spend another night here, I wanted to be prepared.

Suddenly, Bend, Oregon with all its hipsters and snow wasn’t looking so bad.   Especially because there was one thing the town lacked -- javelinas.  The occasional cougar perhaps, but cougars were sensible enough to run when given the chance.

When I finally gave up my Easter egg hunt, Jenny was back in the kitchen, at the stove, cooking some ham and eggs.  “Might be our last chance at a hot meal,” she said.  She too was humming, and it occurred to me that our danger had brought us together, given us a purpose together, and that both of us were liking it.

Still…there ought to be an easier way.  When this was all over, I was going to try harder to find activities that we both enjoyed and which had more meaning than card games and pickle ball.

We sat at the dining room table for once.  We didn’t even glance at the TV, though it passed through my mind that perhaps there was some news there.  Or on the radio.  Right after breakfast I thought.  Or lunch.  Or brunch, or whatever this was.  Whatever it was, it was nice, to just be sitting with Jenny.

We sat eating quietly, trying to ignore the mess outside.  There wasn’t a javelina in sight.  It was beginning to seem like it had been a bad dream, and that was now over.  The brightness of the sun, the clear blue sky.  Nothing threatening in sight.

After brunch, I got up and turned on the TV.  There was nothing but snowy reception.  I switched off the cable connection and tried over the air.  We could sometimes get the nearest channel, though not clearly.

I found it and turned up the volume and tried to make sense of the words through the white noise.  It was local weatherman, but he was sitting at the anchor desk.

“Stay indoors,” he was saying.  “I repeat, stay in doors.  Help is on the way.”

And with that, the TV blinked off.  In the background, the refrigerator went silent.  It always let out a low hum, of which I was aware, but which was just part of the normal background.  The sudden absence of the hum was impossible to ignore.

“The bastards cut the electricity,” Jenny said.

“I don’t see how that’s possible.  Those are overhead lines.”

I went to the corner of the house that overlooked the posts that brought in the electricity and saw the wires hanging down, sparking as they waved in the wind. 

How the hell did they do that? I wondered.

Jenny was standing at the patio door.  I wanted to tell her to get away from it, but didn’t want to scare her.  I hurried to her side, planning to move her gently back.  Then I saw what she was looking at.

It looked like a hundred of the pigs, chasing a dog.  It was sprinting with all its might for our patio door.

Before I could stop her, Jenny was opening the door.  She gave me a look that said, ‘don’t argue.’

The gold retriever, though it was so filthy it was hard to recognize, shot through the opening and Jenny slammed the door shut and latched it as the first javelina slid into the glass.  The outside panel of glass shattered, and I heard the pig squealing as broken shards rained down on it.  Thankfully, the inner panel stayed in place.  A large piece of glass went into its neck and it fell on its side and twitched once, twice…and was still. 

Supposed to be safety glass, I thought to myself.  Isn’t supposed to do that.

The pigs were milling about outside, pushing each other aside, sometimes leaping over their fellows.  A twirling, jumbled mass.

Then they were suddenly quiet, lining up almost in neat rows, in ranks, as impossible as that seemed.

Razorback walked down the middle and looked at the two of us.  It stared up at us with calm yellow eyes.  Then it turned casually and walked away.

To me, it seemed to be saying, ‘I can get you anytime.  You’re just meat in a can.’

“What was that!” Jenny cried, and I realized that she hadn’t yet met old Razorback. 

“That, my dear, is the cause of all our troubles.”  A glimmer of an idea rose in the back of my mind.  Take out the leader, I thought.  But the idea was so outrageous, so desperate; I dismissed it. 

Like the guy on TV said.  Help is on the way.

Except why had it been the weatherman?  And why had the studio been so empty and why had the camera been at such an odd angle and why had he sounded as if the microphone was yards away?

The dog had flopped on its side the moment it was inside and was breathing hard.  It looked up at us with trusting but panicked eyes.

“That’s the Underwood’s dog,” Jenny said.  “What do you think happened?”

I looked at the blood all over the dog’s normally silky fur, and what looked like bits of meat and gristle attached.  I didn’t tell Jenny where I thought the Underwoods -- or at least part of them --- were.

“Do we have any candles?” I asked.

Tuskers. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Barbara Weiss was getting tired of waiting.  She knew the pigs wanted to attack.  In the late afternoon, one of them walked right up to the window and looked her in the eye.  It wasn’t an animal who stared at her, but another thinking being.  A mean one.

She recognized the look.  She’d seen in the eyes of the psychopaths she’d been lucky enough to catch and put away.  Worse she’d seen in the eyes of the smarter psychopaths she hadn’t been able to catch and put away.

There was a breakdown in authority in this county.  She recognized the signs.  Once, when a wildfire had nearly consumed the west side of the neighboring town of Redmond, the sheriff of that county had called in a panic.  He was completely ineffectual, and she drove the thirty miles in ten minutes and took over.

But meanwhile, the criminals had been free to do their damndest, while the officials tried to control the panic.  Never should have got that far, but it happened.

No one was in charge here. There had been that tone in the 9-1-1 operators’ voice, the one that said she was scared and didn’t know what to do and there was no one who could tell her.

To hell with it, Barbara thought.  I’m retired.

Besides, there was no chance that they’d let some strange woman take over.  It had been bad enough in Crook County, where she’d had decades of experience to back her up.

She had thirty-six bullets in her box, and the fifteen in her clip. There was another clip in the glove box of the car and she decided to go get it.

She opened the door carefully, but there wasn’t a pig to be seen.  She walked quickly down the walk.  She’d learned from experience to move steadily, with economy of movement, and she’d get the job done faster and more efficiently than if she hurried.  She got to the car, opened the passenger door, dropped the glove box and reached in for the clip.  She was keeping an eye and ear out for the pigs, so when one came around the corner and stopped dead in its tracks, she watched it carefully.

It raised its snout and squealed.

She put the clip in her pocket and turned to walk back the house.  She sensed a single javelina wouldn’t attack.

But fifteen would.  They came around the house at a full run.  She stopped and turned toward them.  Training took over.  Moving target, friend or foe.  Well, this was easy.  All foes.

She dropped one, then another, then a third.  Several of the others tripped and tumbled over their dead mates.  Barbara killed the lead pig each time, and it seemed to sink into their consciousness because suddenly, none of them were in a hurry to be first.

Then the intelligent javelina, the Mean One, came around the corner, staying well back. It grunted commands and the pigs surged forward again.

Barbara had been slowly retreating to the house the whole time.  She was halfway there.  Again she stopped and squared up on the pigs.  She fired steadily, one by one, and it was a slaughter.

Then she missed, and in the second it took to fire again, the next animal was five feet closer.  The others followed.  She missed again, and now they were ten feet closer.  She tried to keep the panic down, to fire steadily, but her nerves overrode her brain, and she missed two more times, even at close range. 

Then she was clicking on an empty chamber.  She turned and ran for the open door, pulling the extra clip out of her pocket and sliding it home.  She felt a sharp pain in her right leg, and staggered.

Fuck it, she thought.  If I’m going to get killed by pigs, it won’t be by running from them. 

She stopped, and several of the pigs actually went by her and had to turn around.

Suddenly it was as if she could see and hear everything.  Her hand was steady, and it seemed like her hand moved in a blur.  Blam, blam, blam.  The rest of the javelinas went down.

Without a second thought, she turned to where she’d last noticed the Mean One, but it was already turning and running.  She wasted the last five bullets of her clip trying to hit it, but it was gone.

She turned and limped into the house and slammed the door.  Her legs began shaking so badly, she sat down on the small rug at the entrance.  She felt dizzy. She looked down at her leg.  It didn’t hurt, but her entire pants leg was soaked.  She was going to bleed out.

She pulled out her belt and circled her upper thigh and cinched as tight as she could.  Holding onto the belt, keeping the pressure, she made it to the bathroom.  There was a jar of superglue there, and scissors.

She cut away the trousers and groaned at the gash she saw on the fatty part of the back of her shin.  She squeezed the cut together, nearly poured the glue over it, and held on. 

Minutes passed, and she wasn’t sure if she lost consciousness or not, but somehow she managed to keep the cut closed.  When she finally let go, her glue covered fingers pulled some of the skin away, but the cut stayed glued shut.

Then she lay over on the bathroom matt and passed out.

Pain woke her.  She’d let loose of the tourniquet while she slept, but it didn’t matter.  She hadn’t lost any more blood.  She’d survive if the injury didn’t get infected.  She had enough antibiotics to keep that from happening.  She needed to drink plenty of fluids for a while, but she hadn’t lost so much blood that she was incapacitated.

She washed down some pills.

She took off the rest of her pants, washed up as best she could, and wrapped some bandages around the wound.

She limped her way to bed.  Before she fell asleep, it occurred to her that in her attempt to get a clip of fifteen bullets, she had expended thirty bullets, for a net loss of fifteen.

She laughed.  It was worth it. 

It had been the most terrifying, the most exhilarating, the most fun experience she’d had in Arizona.  Even more terrifying than her Internet dates.

And she’d shown the pigs what’s what.

She figured they’d think twice before testing her again.

Tuskers. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Mark was the only employee left in the entire hardware store.  Christy had been there earlier, and Jerad, and both had mysteriously disappeared.  Karina hadn’t returned from lunch.

Flakes, the whole lot of them.  Where Mark came from, you didn’t abandon your post, no matter what.

But as night began to fall, he started getting nervous.  They were supposed to stay open until 9:00, but they were also supposed to be staffed by no less than three employees.  Hell, if the boss can’t even make in, why should he stay?

The irony was, he’d probably made more money today than the store had ever earned.  People had stripped the store. 

But it was what they were buying that was most alarming.  Camping gear, guns, knives, ammo, survival gear, propane, nails, hammers.  Like it was the coming end of the world.  Like a zombie apocalypse.

He kept hearing the term javelinas, and had to look it up on his cellphone.  Some kind of pig.  Then his phone service had blinked off.

When the electricity went out in the store just before dark that was the final straw.  Besides, he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to stay open when the lights were out anyway.

He hurriedly locked the front door, counted the till, and dropped the money in the safe.  He was headed out the door when he remembered Mr. Pederson’s words. 

“Buy one of your fine wares,” he said, “and take it home with a box of ammunition.”

Rumor was, the old man was a millionaire and only pretended to be a hick.

Mark turned around.  There was single rifle left in the entire store, a .30-06, which was just fine with him.  It was what he was accustomed to using when deer hunting.  He took a box of shells.  He wrote an I.O.U. and slipped it in with his Hours Sheet.  He wasn’t sure what store policy was about draws, because he hated taking them.  He might lose his job, but old man Pederson had been pretty compelling. 

Something was going on.

He locked the door behind him, and turned to find the street completely empty.  Not a soul in sight, not even a moving car.  The three guys who drank on the corner and pestered him for loose chain every night even though he hadn’t once given them any, were gone.

What the hell is going on?

He wanted to call Peggy so bad, he couldn’t stand it.  It occurred to him that he’d gotten in the habit of calling her every hour, on the hour.  He’d heard of Internet withdrawal, but never thought he’d suffer from it.  This wasn’t Internet withdrawal, he told himself, this was Peggy withdrawal.

He’d followed her down to this hot dusty god forsaken place because he was madly in love with her.  He’d thought she was so smart, so sophisticated, that wherever she had come from had to be smart and sophisticated too.  At least more than Moscow, Idaho.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.  Wasn’t anyone here but old people.

He slung the rifle strap over his shoulder, feeling silly. Even in Moscow, people didn’t usually walk around with a gun strapped to their back.

He carried the box of ammunition in his other hand.

It was a short five-minute walk to their apartment.  The town was only so big, but he’d managed to find a job about as far as he could possibly get.  It was OK.  It gave him five minutes in the morning to savor the glow of being in her presence all night and it gave him five minutes every night to anticipate being in her presence again.  Actually, all he had to do was think of her, and it was as if she was with him.  Like she had pried open a part of his brain and crawled inside.

He smiled at the image.  Maybe he should take up drawing again while he was down here.  He’d wanted to be a comic book artist for a while, and he actually had some talent.  Peggy was always bugging him to start up again.

 He was so lost in the thought that he didn’t notice the pig at first.  It was standing still, in the middle of the sidewalk, as if waiting for him.  He was a dozen yards away before he saw it.

Weird.  That’s something you don’t see every day.  But, hey.  There were herds of deer wandering around Moscow, so this was probably the same kind of thing.  He took another step forward, expecting the animal to run away.

Instead, it lowered its head and took a step toward him.

“Bug off, you mangy critter!” he shouted, waving his arms.

The pig backed up a couple steps and then turned again.  Something in the angle of its head caught to last of the day’s light, and it sent a shock into Mark’s chest.  He’d seen that look delivering newspapers.  A mean look, the look a dog gave when it wanted to chew your leg off.

He swung the gun around.  He opened the bolt, and then carefully got to his knees and fumbled with the box of ammo.  He pulled out a single bullet, and started to load, when the animal charged.  He managed to slam the bolt home and take aim. 

It wouldn’t fire.  He’d forgot to release the safety.  Amateur mistake, the kind that cost you chances at a trophy buck. 

The kind that might get you killed.

He didn’t look for the safety, he just swung the stock with all he might at the charging pig and connected, sending the animal tumbling off the sidewalk into the street.  As Mark completing the swing, his finger landed on a familiar feeling switch, and he clicked it.  He managed to turn the barrel toward the charging pig and pull the trigger.

Half of its head disappeared.  It flopped back off the sidewalk into the street. Mark stepped off and toed it curiously. 

So that’s a javelina?  It’s just a hairy pig.

As if in answer, he heard a grunt.  A classic pig grunt, like from a cartoon.  Only it was joined by a bunch of other grunts.  He turned slowly.  Half a block away, a dozen of the creatures were staring him down.

Mark reached down for the box of ammunition.

Then he turned and ran.