“No, Bob . . . something else. I’m smelling something more . . . flowery.”
“Flowery? I am smelling something more . . . shitty.”
Mac ignored his friend, instead kneeling to examine the dirt at the edge of a tarry-looking blood pool. “These scratches—there’s something very odd here.”
“Now that is a relief, Mac, because I am just thinking about how normal all of this is.”
“Look at these,” the zoologist said, pointing at a spot on the floor. “They’re animal prints—very strange animal prints.”
Thorne squinted, peering at the seemingly random scratches in the dirt floor. Mac continued. “See how they’re squared off perpendicular to the puddle. It’s almost like—”
“—like animals gatherin’ round a watering hole,” Thorne finished for him.
“Just what I was thinking.”
“But there is no animal that feeds like this, correct?”
“Right. Except this one does—and there’s more than one of them.”
Then MacCready did something that even his friend didn’t expect. He waded into the dark paste and squatted down next to the dead donkey. “A blunt probe would be helpful,” he said, with an actual hint of hope in his voice.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately, my dissection kit was traded some time ago . . . for some, ah . . . research material,” Thorne said.
“Then get me something pointy. I need to get a better look at this.”
After leaving the stall for about thirty seconds, Thorne returned—proudly holding out the six-inch twig he’d managed to scrounge up. “Ta-da!”
Mac gave the stick a skeptical glance then took it. Leaning over the donkey’s hindquarters, he prodded its flesh with the wooden point. “Look at this!” he said, probing a craterlike divot on the back of the donkey’s left thigh.
“That is an awful lot of blood from such a little wound,” Thorne observed. “What coulda—”
“I almost want to say—” MacCready hesitated, using a thumb and index finger to measure the wound. It was about a half-inch long.
“What?”
“Never mind. This bite is all wrong. Too long, too wide, too deep.”
“So what is it?”
“I’m not sure, but something initiated massive systemic hemorrhaging.”
“The bite, maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe, but that’d be a first.” MacCready stood. Having finished his assessment he stepped out of the gore puddle then turned toward his friend. “Fun way to get your ticket punched, huh?”
“Chupacabra,” Thorne muttered. Mac threw him a puzzled look before realizing that Thorne had answered his earlier, half-completed question.
“Yeah, whatever the hell they are. You know, Bob, we could be looking at a new species here. Damn! Maybe a new genus or even a family.”
Thorne saw that his friend had been jacked into zoology overdrive. “You are right, Mac. This is all very wonderful and exciting. So I’m thinking . . . you wanna buy a farm down here? Because coincidentally, mine is now up for sale.”
“What, and give up your great new job with the—”
Just then, a loud rumble—actually more of a prolonged hiss—reached down from the sky. Stepping outside, the friends saw that there were people in the street now—men, women, and children. And they were all looking up.
“Now that is what I call timing,” Thorne said. “Since this is precisely the thunder we keep hearing.”
“You got a phone in this town?”
Thorne answered with a laugh. “Nearest phone or telegraph is in Cuiabá, ’bout fifty miles from here.”
MacCready followed the track of several pointing fingers and saw a long, thin streamer of smoke, trailing up ten miles, maybe more. At its front end he thought he saw a spark of light. The flare of an engine burn? And then it was gone, leaving nothing but a smoky contrail.
No mistaking it. A fucking rocket. “Shit,” MacCready whispered under his breath. His mission was still a needle in the haystack, but the haystack had just gotten smaller.
Thorne shook his head. “So this is the other reason those local guys snapped their caps when you showed up.” The botanist was deadly serious now, gesturing toward the sky. “And five’ll get ya ten your pal Hendry expects you to sniff out those fireworks.”
MacCready continued to watch the thread of smoke. No bet, he thought.
CHAPTER 7
To Hell’s Gate, Demeter
I will give to anyone his weight in gold who can tell me where to find Eugen S?nger.
—VASILLI STALIN (JOSEPH STALIN’S SON)
As a high school freshman, Maurice Voorhees had once written to a relative, “If the devil could teach me how to reach the moon and the planets, I would gladly become his pupil.”