Spending too many days as a guest in someone else’s home gave credence to the old saying: Guests, like fish, start to smell after three days.
Ethan Crossfield and Becca Smith plus her two children Tyler and Kinsey were feeling it was time to go home. They had tried several times to graciously leave Debra Sue Carter’s homestead near Fulshear, Texas, then stayed longer than planned after having been persuaded to stay out of guilt.
Several days earlier they had found a working Ford Model T at NRG Stadium, and with Tyler’s knowledge of the car, they made the trip along with Lexi Carter and Joe Buck.
It had become obvious Joe and Lexi were smitten with each other, which couldn’t have pleased Lexi’s mom Wanda and her grandmother Debra Sue any more than they already were.
The time had come for Ethan, Becca, and her two children to leave. Tyler had already started the Model T and was waiting for everyone to say their goodbyes. “Come on!” he urged. “Enough already!”
“Becca, I’m going to miss you,” Lexi said, standing on the front porch, waving to Becca.
“I’ll miss you too. It was an honor to meet a country star.”
“I’m nothing special.” Lexi smiled demurely. “God gave me the talent to sing and entertain people. That part of my life is over. We are all starting a new life.”
“Agreed,” Becca said. “Please keep singing, okay?”
“I will.” Lexi turned her attention to Kinsey. “Keep your mom safe, okay?”
“You can be sure of that. I’m not easy to get rid of.”
“I’ll second that,” Becca said.
Becca and Kinsey strolled to the Model T. Ducking their heads, they crawled in and sat in the back, both experiencing a range of emotions: Jubilant to finally get home; sad that they had to leave their new friends.
Joe and Ethan shook hands. “It’s been a pleasure,” Joe said. “Watch out for them.”
“You can count on that,” Ethan said. “They’re a great family, and I don’t plan on leaving them anytime soon.”
“I wonder what life will be like in the burbs?” Joe asked.
“We’ll find out soon. I’m hoping Becca’s house hasn’t been looted.”
“Me too. You’ll make it work somehow.”
Ethan nodded. “Definitely.”
“Also, Lexi and I have been doing a lot of talking about the future.” Joe paused for a breath. “I’m staying with her, regardless of what the future will be. If you ever need any help, we’re not far away from you.”
“I appreciate that,” Ethan said. “I might have to take you up on it.”
Debra Sue ran out of the house. “Ethan! Don’t forget the feral hog I killed this morning. The meat will last you a while.”
“I already put it in the trunk.”
“Excellent,” Debra Sue said. “Okay, folks, you’d better get going or I’ll talk you into staying longer.”
Ethan sat in the front seat with Tyler. “Someday you need to teach me how to drive this thing.”
“Lessons start as soon as we get home,” Tyler said.
The Model T puttered down the dirt road, went around the bend, then disappeared out of sight.
Visitors gone, new melancholy filled the house as they realized that life went on, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. Joe had the feeling he hadn’t seen the last of Ethan and Becca, but he was still worried about their safety in this new and dangerous world. For the time being, though, he had to concentrate on his adopted home.
“Let’s head back in the house,” Debra Sue said. “We have lots of work to do.”
Debra Sue, Wanda, Lexi, and Joe entered the house where they were met by Cullen Pickers, sprawled out on a sofa, nursing a drink.
“You’re drinking my good whiskey,” Debra Sue griped. “It’s not yours to drink.” She waltzed up to Cullen and forcefully took the bottle from him. “If you stay here, you have to pull your own weight. Otherwise you can leave because nobody is keeping you here.”
“What do you expect me to do? Slop the hogs?”
“I don’t have any hogs.”
Cullen smirked. “I know.”
“Why don’t you set some traps for whatever varmint killed my best goat a few days ago.”
“Traps? No way am I touching some rusty heap of metal with who knows what type of dried blood on it.” Cullen actually had a point. He had soft hands, not the hands of a man who worked the land or handled a gun. If he had a nickname it would be “Dough Boy” after the Pillsbury dough boy. Soft and white as biscuit dough before baking. All anyone had to do was to push a finger into his rotund belly and he’d squeal like a baby piggy.
Cullen grabbed the bottle back and took a swig of whiskey. “Good stuff. I never expected good whiskey in a place like this.”
“I swear, I’m gonna—”
“I’ll take care of this,” Joe said, interrupting Debra Sue’s threat.
Joe could only imagine what Debra Sue was thinking about doing to Cullen. Granted, he had been a problem from the get-go, and the entire group felt guilty about telling him to leave. A day earlier, Debra Sue had taken Joe, Lexi, and Wanda to the side and asked them what do to about Cullen. All except Lexi were in agreement to tell him to pack his bags and get the hell out, and since they were unable to come to a unanimous decision, they decided he could stay a little longer. For some unknown reason, or perhaps it was only a soft heart, Lexi was willing to give Cullen a second chance. Joe needed Cullen to man up before things got out of hand. It wasn’t that Joe wanted Cullen to stay, but Lexi was right, it was the right thing to do.
Cullen obviously was fighting his own demons, a fact Joe could empathize with. Everyone had their own demons. As Cullen’s problems could become everyone’s problems, Joe needed to nip the issue in the bud.
If the guy had any redeeming qualities, he was a master at hiding them.
Cullen’s eyelids drooped and as he was nodding off, Joe said, “Cullen, come with me. You need to sober up.”
Joe helped Cullen from the sofa and guided him to the front door and onto the porch where Cullen broke free. Debra Sue was right behind them.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Not enough,” Cullen slurred.
Joe gave Cullen a long glance. “Nobody is making you stay, so if you don’t shape up, you’ll get shipped out, and I can tell you one thing for certain – you don’t want to make those three Carter ladies unhappy, especially Lexi’s grandmother. She’s one tough cookie and isn’t the kind of woman to take any crap from a man. If it was up to me,” Joe said gruffly, “I’d tell you to hit the road. So what’s it gonna be?”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” Cullen mumbled.
“Guess what? Neither did anyone else. Getting drunk before noon isn’t exactly going to solve anything is it?”
Cullen grunted.
“You’re a grown man, so start acting like one. I suggest you go sleep it off in the barn.”
“Don’t put him in the good barn!” Debra Sue protested. “Take him to the one where we keep hay.”
“You want me to sleep in that rat infested barn?” Cullen was offended at the suggestion.
“Right now it’s the safest place for you,” Joe shot back. “Because if I don’t shoot you, the ladies will.”
Cullen huffed. “Nobody tells me what to do.”
Joe leaned into Cullen. “Maybe you bullied your colleagues into submission, and maybe you were tolerated because you were good at your job, so let me reiterate—”
“Oooh, big word for a plumber. I’m so scared.” Cullen exaggerated the sentence accompanied by placing hands in the air for additional emphasis.
“I’ve had it.” Joe clenched his hand around Cullen’s soft bicep and marched him down the porch stairs and into the yard. Cullen protested the manhandling by trying to jerk his arm away. Joe gripped it tighter, showing the smaller man he’d better play nice.
The two men walked in silence, making their way past the good barn, rounded the back of the yard, the garden, the pumphouse, and down a path with thick brush on each side until they came to the old barn.
“This piece of shit!” Cullen exclaimed. “This is like something in a horror movie!”
“Maybe this will teach you a lesson,” Joe growled.
Joe opened the heavy barn doors, then with a push and a shove, Joe used the flat part of his boot for a well-placed kick to Cullen’s behind, which in reality was as soft as his bicep. The former executive fell face down into the hay where he got a whiff of old manure. Before Cullen could regain his composure, Joe shut the barn doors then locked them.
“There, you can sleep it off now!” Joe barked.
“Hey!” Cullen shouted, running to the doors, banging his fists. He screamed, “You can’t lock me in here! I need to piss!” Cullen rattled the loose barn doors, venting his frustration on the rickety structure. “Where am I supposed to piss?”
“Anywhere you want to. Pretend you’re a cow.”
“Let me outta here, you son-of-a-bitch!”
“Or you’ll do what?” Joe’s question was met with silence.
By now, Joe was halfway back to the house, chuckling about the slew of profanities Cullen hurled his way. The muffled yelling morphed into indecipherable words. Joe thought he heard Cullen crying in the distance. Those types of guys were cut out for the corporate world, full of psychopaths in top management who made it to the VP level and didn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody else other than themselves. Saving the corporation big money always meant big bonuses for the executives, so Cullen was always happy to hear about a new layoff.
Most VPs were charming, talked in even tones, rarely raising their voices, yet ruthlessly considered people only as tools to further their own careers. They couldn’t care less if a terminated employee was too old to get a new job, or that a serious family illness would make replacement health insurance impossible to get. Joe knew better than to waste his sympathy on people without a conscience.
Cullen, though, was a spoiled bully, and not smart enough to be a psychopath.
He paced back and forth, sulking at being shoved into the musty barn smelling of mice, moldy hay, and old manure.
Slivers of light filtered into the cavernous space from cracks in the wooden structure. Dust motes floated in the air, highlighted by the light, only to disappear among the shadows. An ancient and rusty tractor sat alongside one wall, covered in years of dust and old pollen. Needing a place to sleep, Cullen inspected the ancient tractor on the slim chance a seat had survived the decades from the ravages of heat and weather.
He huffed a defeated sigh.
The sheet-metal bucket seat was so rusty that the surface could have doubled as sandpaper. On closer inspection, a mother mouse had built a nest, littered with many seasons of droppings, and was using the tractor seat as a roof to protect her babies.
Great. Now he was breathing in mouse dropping spores, and could possibly be exposed to the Hantavirus. He sneezed, then used his shirt sleeve to wipe his nose.
A thought of triumphant revenge entered Cullen’s mind, and he frantically tried to start up the ancient tractor. If only he could crash through the barn wall and drive it into Debra Sue’s house, they would regret the day they ever dared to disrespect him. His brief fantasy faded away when he found the tractor’s battery to be nowhere around.
With nothing else to do, he stretched out on an old dust-covered tarp, settled into it, and drifted into a fitful sleep. Tossing and turning, he dreamed about the horror when the fighter jet crashed into the stadium. He dreamed of the screams and the smell of burning flesh. He dreamed of being trapped and the claustrophobia he endured until being rescued. He thrashed and mumbled in his drunken stupor until completely exhausted, when the dreams stopped.
~
The afternoon came and went, and dusk settled upon the land. Nocturnal animals emerged from their burrows, wary of the predators awakened by the approaching night. A racoon crawled out of a hollow log it had called home for the past month. Beginning its normal routine, it shuffled towards the barn where it sniffed along the bottom edges of the wooden structure, the wood ragged from the effects of time. The animal stuck its nose in a crack of the wood, snorted, taking in an unusual odor.
The animal disregarded the scent trails left by slugs and snails, the pungent smell of decaying grass and wood, of mice and owl scat. One odor was unfamiliar, unknown to the racoon. It was one of dominance and cunning, of power and ruthlessness in the quest to survive. Standing on its hind legs, the racoon sniffed the air again, its nose twitching.
Another scent intrigued the animal, where no scent should be. It was a scent similar to the scents emanating from the house where the humans lived.
Disregarding the human odor as a normal one, it focused on the unfamiliar scent. Unable to place it, the racoon listened to any movement or unfamiliar sound.
Intermittent snoring sounds intrigued the animal, dismissing them as non-threatening.
A low growl came from the barn, and the racoon immediately sensed the power of the unknown animal. The racoon froze for a moment until its fight or flight response kicked in. A second later, the animal bolted away from the barn, running a short distance to the nearest tall tree. The racoon lunged for the tree, its claws digging into the bark, climbing until it found a branch high enough for safety and stout enough to support its weight.
There in the dark, it listened, waiting for whatever the night would bring.
In the barn, an immense shadow emerged from atop a pile of stacked hay. The large animal, one not native to the North American continent, sat on its haunches, eyes searching the rafters and the floor below.
Accustomed to the dark, its eyes saw everything. The piles of hay and wire securing the bales; the rusty farm equipment not touched in decades; the old tractor where mice had raised countless generations. It heard the raccoon sniffing along the edge of the barn, smelled the barn owl sitting on a high rafter.
Earlier the animal had witnessed the man being shoved into the barn. With increasing interest, the animal watched the actions of the man, and sensed it was trapped by the banging noise on the door, and by the man’s yelling.
The only evidence of the animal’s presence was the yellow of its eyes. It moved with the finesse of a silent warrior, at home in the shadows of the woodland it now called home, similar to where it had been captured. It had been poached as a young animal from the vast expanse of Africa, where it had been subdued with a dart while eating a downed gazelle. Rendered unable to move, it witnessed its own capture due to its inability to fight. Unknown to the animal, the dead gazelle had been tethered to a stake near a camouflaged hideout. He had been tricked.
It languished for months in small cages, where children poked it with sticks. The animal growled and showed its impressive set of teeth, meant for killing prey much larger than itself. During this time, its hatred towards humans grew.
It survived a long journey with other caged animals in the bowels of a massive aircraft. The scent of urine and scat from different animals mingled with its own.
It remembered another journey filled with humans and vehicles spewing exhaust until the animal reached its destination. It was no longer in a cramped cage. Its living space had rocks and trees, and some bushes. Water filled a concrete moat. All in all a poor substitute for the wide open spaces where it had roamed. To pass the time, the animal sunned itself on a rock as a plethora of humans gawked at it from a distance through the safety of metal bars. The sounds and smells of this new jungle awakened at night where elephants trumpeted, lions roared, pigs squealed, and birds flew, reminiscent of its time on the African plains.
Now though, hunger gnawed at the animal, and it propelled him to leave the safety of its high perch.
On silent paws, and choosing the path of least resistance, it crept down from the stack of hay bales.
The animal kept to the shadows in the barn, wary of a trap. Humans were clever the animal had discovered, luring their prey with food.
The animal crouched on a hay bale located above the man where it observed the sleeping figure, while listening to the soft snoring.
The man breathed evenly, his chest rising and falling with each breath.
Cullen Pickers woke with a start, his eyes wide open. An intense shiver captured him, like none he had ever experienced, raging through his body like an electrified river. Cullen had always been afraid of the dark, and even to this day he slept with a light on in the bedroom, afraid of the boogey man under his bed. Sitting up, it took him a moment to gather his senses and to realize he was still in the barn. He cursed Joe Buck, then scratched his crotch and—
A powerful force knocked him over where he tumbled, ending up on his back. He thought a hay bale from above had fallen onto him.
As he reached up to protect his face from additional hay bales, an intense pain like someone had stuck a knife in his neck rendered him unable to move.
A brief thought crossed his mind, it was possible he had been impaled by an old piece of farm equipment.
Adrenaline surged through his body and he gasped for breath.
Nothing happened.
He gasped again, needing to scream.
Nothing.
The pain in his neck intensified.
He flailed his arms to push away the pressure on his neck and chest. A warm liquid smelling of iron flowed down his neck, and a stabbing pain in both arms prevented him from moving.
He desperately needed to breathe.
He thrashed and kicked his legs.
Something wasn’t right. He smelled an unfamiliar pungent odor of an animal he couldn’t identify. His mind registered the odor of hot, stinking breath.
He was in searing pain.
With his strength waning, and as stars appeared in his consciousness among the blackness of the barn, he opened his eyes to the horror of his last moments.
A massive leopard with yellow eyes had its jaws clamped around his neck, pressing down on his windpipe. Its claws were sunk deep into the fleshy part of his biceps.
Cullen feebly struggled. He was no match for the heavily muscled beast, meant to take down prey twice its size.
In Cullen’s last seconds, he had no thoughts of his life or his accomplishments, no consciousness of being loved, of being missed, only the feeling of his life slipping away into an empty, cold void.
His eyes remained open as his heart pumped for the last time.
Cullen Pickers, a man who ruled by intimidation and bullying, was dead. Soon he’d be eviscerated.
~
A long time had passed since the leopard had taken down large prey. His inborn instinct had survived the ravages of captivity at the zoo, suppressed but not forgotten.
Cautious at first when the leopard had escaped the zoo, the big animal hid during the day then at night it crept along the deserted streets, weaving its way through the massive congestion of buildings and abandoned cars. At last, it found an elevated highway where it ran until it reached the end of the city. Wide open spaces of a prairie at the western end of a Houston suburb provided ample places to hide where it blended into the colors of dormant grass and shadows.
It searched for hideouts, perhaps a rocky outcropping or a natural cliff. The prairie and woodland provided none. When the leopard found an old barn, where no footprints of human activity were visible, it pushed through loose boards, climbed to the top of the hay stack, then settled into a peaceful slumber.
It had been awakened by shouting and the pungent odor of an inebriated man, unsteady on his feet, a sign the leopard could subdue his prey.
Instinct had guided the leopard to a successful kill.
Taking his time, and in the privacy of the closed barn, the leopard licked his prize, long licks using his rough tongue, lapping the spilled blood, savoring the moment.
Instinct embedded in its DNA guided the leopard to move from the barn where it could devour his catch away from human habitation.
Clamping down on the man’s neck, the leopard dragged his catch to the back of the barn where he had entered through loose boards. In the process, a blood trail stained the hay, and drag marks were left where the man’s shoes scraped the soft earth.
Outside the barn, the leopard lifted his head skyward, the stars fading and giving way to the first light of morning.
He heard the rumblings of life in the nearby house, heard a rooster crowing.
The majestic beast paused a moment, resting on the soft carpet of leaves near the gnarly trunk of a two hundred year old oak. The animal panted while it rested, breathing in the clean air.
Once the leopard regained its strength, it began a trek through the thick woodlands where the creep of urban sprawl had not reached. A clear stream, teeming with perch and where bullfrogs hibernated, flowed through the land, and large trees formed a canopy, lining the edges. A startled deer bolted from its hiding place, alarmed at the sight of the unusual predator.
Tracks of various woodland animals were visible in the sand. Deer, wild hogs, racoons, foxes, coyotes.
The leopard retreated further into the woodland, traversing around a bramble of dewberry vines, old growth, dragging its prey over meadows and untouched grass.
In a natural clearing, a massive oak with a splendid canopy and low hanging limbs, strong enough to support the leopard’s weight and its kill, lay ahead. There, the beast lumbered up the tree, high enough to protect him and his kill from scavengers. Panting from exertion and exhausted from its journey, the leopard tucked its kill on a sturdy limb. It surveyed the surrounding countryside, satisfied he could eat without being detected. In the late morning it would eat. For now, it needed to rest.