Vampires of the Plains (Book 1): Burden Kansas

  BURDEN KANSAS

  by

  Alan Ryker

  Copyright 2011 by Jeffrey Rice

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author, except where permitted by law. Contact: jalanrice@gmail.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art "The Outsider That's Inside" by Justin Critch, justin.critch@gmail.com, http://justincritch.daportfolio.com

  Cover art "Bovine Skyline" by Nate Brelsford

  Cover design by Wendy McBride, mcbride.wendy@gmail.com

  Copy edit by Theresa D. Lininger, athenaedits@gmail.com, http://athenaedits.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Keith stood at his kitchen counter. He alternated between gulping down black coffee and taking bites out of a Hostess Fruit Pie. Out in the yard the dogs barked relentlessly. He ignored it for as long as he could but the sound bored into his head. Even though he wanted another fruit pie, he decided to check on the commotion.

  The hot Kansas sun greeted him as he opened the door. The day would be scorching. The sun had bleached the color from the entire landscape. The fields. The outbuildings. The two-by-fours he'd used to build his big, wrap-around porch.

  He stepped off the porch into his yard and walked around his white-slatted two-story house. His dogs bounced around and barked at a common center. They jumped in and out with their muzzles low. From the way they kept their distance, he knew what they barked at, but still he squinted until he saw it.

  Keith went back to the house, reached in through the screen door and grabbed his shotgun. He walked across his lawn again.

  "Back up."

  The dogs didn't take their eyes off the rattler, but they backed up.

  For a few seconds, Keith stared the creature in its eyes. It didn't look away. He had to respect that. He pulled the trigger and felt the familiar punch into his shoulder.

  The snake's jaws opened and shut reflexively as Keith held it just behind the skull. He watched the rattler's fangs flex, as if nothing would satisfy it more than for Keith to join it in death. Keith picked up the body and admired the heft. It had been a big boy. He looked at the nubby tail.

  Keith rode his ATV across his pastures. He rode along the fence line, looking for breaks. Ever since his cattle started coming up with wounds, he'd had to keep a close eye on his fence for loose wires. He didn't know if they were getting broken by his panicking cattle or by whatever was attacking them.

  He came to a place where the top wire had snapped and hopped off his ATV. He took his wire tensioner from the tool chest on the back and went to work. A broken fence was always a bad sign. Whatever had broken the fence had bled, on the wire and on the grass.

  With the barbed wire mended he got back on his ATV and broke away from the fence line, checking on his herd. They grazed and ignored him. They were accustomed to him and his little four-wheeled vehicle. Most of them had watched him ride around on it since they were born. Keith had done that work on a horse as a young man, but he didn't mind progress.

  Eventually he came upon a cow with black dried blood crusted down its neck and front leg. He hopped down and checked it. The cow never stopped chewing the grass as Keith felt lightly at the wound. There wasn't much to be done. The cow was fine. The holes had already closed up on their own. Still.

  Keith rode on. He had a feeling. He headed away from the herd, back to the fence line. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he knew, and felt no surprise when he came upon a cow lying on its side. The other cow's neck had merely been punctured. This one's was torn open. Low on the shoulder were large deep claw wounds. He checked for signs of life but of course there were none. Dead. Keith shook his head.

  "Shit."

  Chapter 2

  Sheriff Wheeler, tall and lanky, walked with a group of men across Logan's pasture. Old Mr. Logan, angry, hunched and dried-out, led the way. Behind them came Gerald Rossford, a Kansas State University professor who headed a state-funded project to research the animal attack issue, and his graduate assistant, known to Sheriff Wheeler only as Jason.

  "The latest is right over here," Mr. Logan said. He pressed through the waist-high, stiff grass like it was running water. He was a cantankerous old bastard and got on a lot of people's nerves, but Sheriff Wheeler couldn't help but find him funny. "At least as far as I know. Probably half my herd laying dead around here."

  They came upon a steer collapsed on its side. Like most of the others, its neck had been torn and it lay in a dried pool of its own blood. Dr. Rossford knelt down beside the carcass and examined the wounds.

  "So what are we dealing with here?" Sheriff Wheeler asked.

  "Well, that's hard to say. We know that this isn't the work of any predator on record," Dr. Rossford said.

  "So you know that it's nothing that you know of. That's helpful."

  Dr. Rossford seemed to catch Wheeler's sarcastic tone. He stood up and faced him. "It's not much, but it's something, and it's actually very exciting. There aren't many predators left in North America capable of killing a full-grown cow. And the number of large predators is constantly reducing, never increasing."

  "Doctor, you have to understand that my community doesn't share your enthusiasm for this new predator capable of destroying their livelihood, however interesting it may be to the scientific community. So what can you tell them?"

  Dr. Rossford nodded in a way that showed that he understood the plight of the common man. "I can tell you that it's part of a pattern. I've read files on cases like this that started two years ago in Oklahoma. A few years before that, it was Texas. So whatever this creature is, it seems to be expanding its territory north."

  "Why?"

  "Food supply? Over-population? Global warming? Who knows. But these attacks weren't happening on US soil a decade ago."

  "Holy shit," Sheriff Wheeler said, rolling his eyes. "Are you actually telling me that we're dealing with illegally-immigrated chupacabra?"

  Dr. Rossford and Jason both laughed. Rossford gestured to Jason. "Don't think we haven't joked about that. Who knows? The Mexican government doesn't do a great job of documenting mythical creatures. It sure does match the creature's MO, doesn't it?"

  Sheriff Wheeler felt his annoyance growing. "I'll let the ranchers know how funny the situation is. Can I also perhaps pass on at least a description of what this animal might look like?"

  "We can make some educated guesses," Dr. Rossford said, crouching down beside the carcass. Wheeler squatted beside him, feeling his knees crackle in protest. Dr. Rossford spanned his hand across the cow's bloody neck wound.

  "Despite what you might think, this isn't a large bite wound. If judging by the size of the bite alone—the width of the wounds inflicted by the upper fangs and the distance between the wounds inflicted by the upper fangs and those inflicted by the lower fangs—I'd say this creature was no bigger t
han a coyote."

  "What? Are you serious?" Wheeler asked.

  "That wasn't done by no coyote," Logan said. Wheeler felt the old man's spittle hit the back of his neck as he spoke.

  "That's only if you go by the size of the bite. The strength of the bite is considerably greater than that which most animals the size of a coyote could produce. So the predator probably has a small muzzle proportionate to its size. That makes sense, because the purpose of the bite isn't to crush the throat and suffocate, as a cougar would, but simply to puncture the carotid artery or the jugular vein. This allows the predator to drink the blood, like the chupacabra we joked about."

  "Yeah, we know all that," Wheeler said. "What new can you tell me?"

  "These are your experts?" Logan asked, once again spraying Wheeler's neck with his denture-pickled saliva.

  "You need to back up, Logan. Jesus." Sheriff Wheeler wiped the back of his neck.

  "Sorry for getting too close to my own dead steer." But Logan took a step to the side.

  Dr. Rossford said, "Sheriff, I'm working with the same information that has you and your people stumped. I'm trying to paint you a picture of what this animal might look like based on the limited evidence we have. Are you going to let me?"

  "Sorry. Go ahead."

  Dr. Rossford leaned closer to Wheeler. "The rest of the information is sensitive. Not for the public. We need to speak privately."

  Wheeler slowly stood, pressing down on his creaking knees. "Logan, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

  "This is my land and that's my dead cow."

  "I know, I know. And you'll be the first to hear once I've got more to tell. But right now I'm sure you've got plenty to do."

  Logan looked like he wanted to say something, but for the first time that Wheeler could remember, he didn't. He turned and walked back towards his house.

  "So it has a small mouth," Dr. Rossford said, "but a disproportionately strong bite. Considering the way it uses its bite, that's not so strange. What are stranger are its forepaws." The doctor pointed to one set dug into the steer's shoulder. "These upper claw marks aren't that unusual, in that there are four roughly side-by-side. The spacing and depth of the wounds indicates a very large predator, probably near five hundred pounds. The predator uses the claws for grasping, not injuring, so it sinks them in and then holds the prey still as it drinks its blood. And it doesn't always use them. They're found most often in cases where the livestock has been killed, as if they are a sign of over-stimulation in the predator. The strange part about this animal's forepaw is the fifth claw mark. The fifth claw is very far away from the rest, and, if you notice the curve of the wound, it faces the opposite direction."

  Dr. Rossford looked at Wheeler expectantly, but Wheeler was lost. "Meaning?"

  "Meaning this thing has opposable thumbs, or something like them. Now, big cats have dew claws, and they are sizeable, but they face mostly in the same direction as the other claws. So could this be a new type of large cat? I don't think so, but it's being considered. There are marsupials with opposable thumbs—"

  "Now I know no possum did this," Wheeler said.

  Dr. Rossford laughed. "Very true. I don't think some enormous mutant opossum is responsible for this. The point I was making is that the strangest thing about this new predator isn't its thumbs."

  "Oh, great. So what's the strangest?"

  "The venom," Jason said, smiling.

  Dr. Rossford nodded. "The venom. It's a neurotoxin. It sedates the prey, which is why the use of claws seems to be optional and a sign of over-eager feeding. Because the animal typically bites the neck, the venom goes straight to the brain and begins working in less than a second. The toxin affects the brain rather than the peripheral nervous system, and it appears to cause permanent damage. It's difficult to tell with cattle because, well, they're cattle. But the strangest thing about the venom—"

  "You know, you really seem to be enjoying this. There's always a new 'strangest thing' around the corner. Is this finally it?"

  "The strangest thing is that the venom contains a microorganism, similar to a virus."

  "That's not so strange. I saw something like that on a show about Komodo dragons."

  "Very good, Sheriff. But this isn't the same. Komodo dragon saliva is filled with bacteria which live in their mouths. This appears to be a new sort of microorganism, not quite a virus. Every member of this species seems to be infected with it, at least judging from the bite wounds we've taken samples from. In fact, it appears that the animal may have a symbiotic relationship with the microorganism."

  "So it infects its prey?"

  "No. That's what's so interesting. The cattle that have survived attacks show no signs of infection, despite the infectious agent being present in the wounds. The agent can't survive in the cows' blood, only in the venom at the wound site. We've got a few theories going."

  "Of course you do." On television, people always picked on nerds. Wheeler had never understood why. He felt that he was beginning to, though.

  "It might be a vestigial carry-over. The venom containing the infectious agent works, so the agent hasn't been evolved out even though it doesn't do anything. Or—and this is the more interesting possibility—"

  "You'll like this," Jason the graduate assistant said.

  "Cattle might not be its natural prey. A particular virus is able to infect only a particular type of animal. For instance, you can't catch a cold from your dog. A virus has to mutate to jump species."

  "Like the bird flu they keep worrying about," Wheeler said.

  "Exactly. Since this predator seems to be migrating, it might be encountering food sources it's not fully adapted for."

  "So what's its natural prey?" Wheeler asked, finally getting into the mystery. "What should it be infecting?"

  "Who knows? That's why it's so interesting."

  "Some people would call that interesting. Most would call it a bit anti-climactic." Sheriff Wheeler held out his hand and Dr. Rossford shook it. "Thank you for talking to me, but I've got a Ranchers' Association meeting to get to."

  "Hopefully next time we talk, I'll have a little more to tell you."

  "That'd be good. Please do keep me in the know. These ranchers are halfway up my ass."

  Wheeler tipped his hat and walked away.

  Chapter 3

  Keith stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing his hair dry with a towel. He looked at himself in the mirror over his wide dresser. He pushed his stomach out and smacked it with both hands, then sucked it in. Not bad. Not bad for nearing fifty. For the crap he ate and the way he drank. But the alcohol had recently been taking his appetite.

  He got dressed. Clean, dark blue jeans. Western shirt. He checked himself in the mirror again as he cinched up his bolo tie, then sat on the edge of the bed. For a moment he felt the cool softness of the quilt with his palms. Irene had made it. It had taken her quite a while. She'd also embroidered the country scenes onto the decorative pillows at the head of the bed. She used to sit on the porch and cross-stitch and hum tunelessly. No one had ever been brave enough to tell that woman she was completely tone-deaf.

  Keith leaned down and grabbed one of his dress boots. His lower back tightened in protest. It wanted to punish him for riding the ATV over the little ridges along his property all morning. He slipped the boot on.

  In the kitchen Keith sat a beer on the counter and cracked it open. He lifted it to his mouth and drank half of it down at once, then stopped to catch his breath. The cold tightened up his throat. Once it opened again he gulped the rest down, crushed the can and tossed it in the trash. Then he ducked into the fridge for another. He set it on the counter and cracked it open.

  Keith drove past small houses with toys littering their front yards, then past mostly abandoned brick buildings. He stopped at the town's only traffic light. It had one color—red—and it flashed continuously. He looked over at the gas station that warranted the traffic light and noticed the beat-up van parked beside the trucks. Brando
n and Dennis were there. Keith wondered if they'd still be after the meeting. He drove on.

  He pulled into the gravel lot outside the community center and parked alongside the other pickups. The gravel crunched under his boots as he got out and walked up to the door, converging with the other men. Some ignored him, others nodded to him. He returned the nods.

  "County Ranchers' Association meeting, June 6th, 7 PM" was written on the chalkboard beside the door, beneath a small awning.

  Keith paused inside and scanned the large room. The community center had a storage room and a kitchen, but was otherwise one large gathering hall. He looked around the clusters of talking ranchers. At the other end of the building stood a small stage with a podium. Behind the podium was the couch that Santa sat on during the community Christmas celebration. Keith hadn't been to one since Irene died. She'd enjoyed watching the children sit on Santa's lap to tell him what they wanted that year. Female problems early on left her unable to have children, but she'd been the mothering sort.

  From the folding chairs facing the stage, Keith's younger brother Roy waved at him. Roy was shorter and plumper than Keith. He took after their mother, who'd been a kind woman. Keith walked over and took the seat beside him.

  "How're things, brother?" Roy asked.

  "'Bout the same as ever."

  "I hear ya. Can you believe they scheduled this at the same time as the game?"

  Keith shrugged. "Not like we'll win."

  "I think we might. I was watching ESPN and they—"

  "We won't win, Roy."

  "You don't know that. I heard that—"

  But the click of a microphone and a violent burst of feedback silenced Roy and all the other ranchers. Dale, the Ranchers Association president stepped away with his hands up, as if to pacify the sound system. The screeching stopped and he took a tentative step back toward the podium and said, "This meeting of the Ranchers Association will come to order. First, if the secretary would please read the minutes of the last meeting…"