Skinwalkers - Chapter 1 (excerpt)
by Jamie K. Wilson
(this is a work in progress and will almost certainly have errors.)
Sarah was dreaming about saving children again.
It was Afghanistan, bloody Kaman Province. Cold. Her squadmates and she bumped and shuddered in the humvee; everyone but the driver and his shotgun man were trying to catch some sleep, as usual. A sharp-edged bolt dug into her cheek. She slipped one hand out of her pocket and under her head, but that left only one hand on her pistol. Suddenly the humvee slowed and stopped. Probably an IED in the road again. She readied, sitting up and checking the clip, slipping off the safety. This was the sort of situation that led to ambushes. Her friends piled out, most of them closer than brothers. And then she knew for certain it was a dream.
The little girl - baby, really - couldn’t have been more than six months old. She could sit up, but not much else. Her curly blond hair stirred slightly in the breeze that kicked off the mountains in the evenings - in the apocalyptic Afghan landscape, there was little but scrubby trees and the occasional goat to stop wind. Her cheeks were pink, eyes blue. She wore nothing but a dusty diaper. There she sat, in the dirt, playing with more dirt and gurgling. She was in the middle of the road, and all around her were bits of debris and disturbed earth, each one potentially a lethal bomb.
“Surely she’s thirsty,” Sarah said to Kimo, who crouched next to her at the edge of the minefield.
“She’s dead already.”
Sarah looked out at the baby, happy and gurgling. Soon enough, she’d realize she was hungry or thirsty or wet, and then she’d start to cry, and then roll or crawl or whatever her baby mode of movement was. And then she’d be dead and in a hundred pieces.
Right now, she was a living, breathing, beautiful baby girl.
“I can’t.” Sarah started checking her stuff, grabbed an extra flack jacket to wrap around the baby. “I can’t let this happen.” Somewhere, Sarah’s mind screamed at her, no, leave it, you can’t do anything, you never can, but the dream kept rolling.
“Sarah, damn it, no. It’s a trap. Remember that mother - what was her name - Hasti? The bastards took all her keiki, four of them. That has got to be the youngest - looks just like her. They put her out there because they knew one of us would do something stupid. We go tell the mother, then we look for the bastards.”
“She doesn’t have that kind of time. You just cover me. Tell the guys. I’m getting her.”
Kimo said something in Hawaiian. “Ain’t nothing I say gone to stop you. You some kine of stupid, you know?”
“Just cover me.”
The mine field was new, on hard-packed rocky earth; it would not be hard to find hastily-placed mines if she moved slow. They wouldn’t start shooting until Sarah was well out into the field. She threw the extra flak jacket over her helmet to protect her face and neck. Hopefully, the guys would be able to take out the snipers before Sarah reached the baby; then she could use the jacket to protect her on the way back out. The little one was maybe twenty feet in or so - they didn’t have time to make the field bigger, thank God. All Sarah had to do was crawl out there with a small makeshift metal detector in hand to hopefully locate the mines, grab the baby, cover her, and crawl back with baby in tow.
Yup. Piece of cake.
Sarah heard the guys muttering behind me, including Gunny Proctor. She also knew they wouldn’t stop me; Gunny would do this job himself if he wasn’t the guy who could get the unit out of there alive. She grabbed a swig of water, did one last check, and crawled out.
Not five feet in, she caught a beep. The baby heard it too, and looked toward her with interest. “Sh, little girl, I’ll be right there.” Sarah moved the machine around until the beeps slowed and then stopped, then crawled that way.
She felt the impact right next to her foot before she heard the report. She flinched. The bullet knocked a dust cloud into the air, and dirt and pebbles pattered over both flak jackets. Could bullets set off one of these mines? Sarah hadn’t asked herself that question before. Dumb. Too late now.
Okay. She forced herself to keep moving, inches at a time. Behind her, the guys opened up. Good. That meant they saw a flash somewhere when the shot was fired. Hopefully that would at least keep the bastard busy.
The baby started fussing. Crap. “Sh, sh, baby, I’m coming.” The soothing tone of voice was drowned out by the pap-pap-pap directly behind her. She saw another puff of dust nearby. Faster. The little jury-rigged machine went beep-beep-beep. She circled it.
Somehow, Sarah reached the baby. Her face was red with crying and Sarah could smell that she had soiled her diaper, but she hadn’t tried to move. Small blessings. She pulled the flak jacket off and wrapped the baby in it; poor thing was afraid, because here was all the noise and Sarah was clearly not Mommy, but she didn’t fight. After a minute, she clung like a little limpet. Sarah backtracked carefully to cover, retracing the earlier path in as closely as possible, and only a moment later she was back with the guys and handing the baby over to Kimo while they cheered and Gunny chewed her out over how stupid that last stunt was, Specialist Mack, and how I oughta—! And somehow the mother was there crying and her kids came in holding hands with Spinnett, and everything was peaches and cream. And in the background the world turned red, and her chest ached, and --
She woke with the dry, dusty taste of Afghanistan in her mouth; the damned country was far away now, but it was closer to her than ever. She was still cold. When she felt the lurch and sickening drop as the plane hit turbulence, she bit back a scream. Next to her in the cockpit, Pete checked some dials, flipped a switch or two. “Looks good. Gets windy this time o’ year.”
His voice sounded directly in her ear - then she remembered, headphones. If you didn’t wear headphones in a turboprop, the engines drowned out any conversation.
“I forgot how much I hate to fly.”
Pete looked around at her, teeth gleaming in a smile. “That woke you, eh? Ol' Pete will get you home safe. Your dad'll have my head if I don't.”
She stifled a scream when the plane dropped again, nearly brushing the pointed pine tips. “But will my dinner make it?”
He laughed and focused back on his flying. The little puddle-jumpers, so necessary to Alaska, were often not a match for the sharp downdrafts that swept through the valleys and peaks, but Pete was one of the best; he’d been part of Air America before Vietnam was so much as a police action, and dodging drafts, he said, was plenty easier than dodging Vietcong AKAK.
Below, through scraps of cloud and some fine sheets of rain, Sarah could see home - Luneqituq. It looked a little bigger than before, with a shopping center on the edge of town that hadn't been there two years ago when she left for the warmer climate of Hawaii, but otherwise it was as brown and muddy as ever, the dark shadows cast by nearby hills and ridges just as sharply outlined. She strained to see Dad’s farm.
Pete glanced at her. “Over there, the blue roof. He had it redone so it'd stand out a little more.”
“How many dogs does he have now?”
“Bunch, huh? Your old Sal was just a puppy machine. Last time I went over, there were three new litters, and people lined up for the new ones.”
“Good thing, with the wolf problem.”
“Ayuh.” Pete was quiet a moment. “Bagged me a couple three, four days ago. Contract hunter needed a pilot. Pretty things running through the snow. Shame there ain't no better way of dealing with them.”
Sarah started to answer, then changed her mind when she saw Pete was angling toward the muddy strip that passed for a runway in Luneqituq. She always sat on the aisle in a big commercial plane, and a windowless MAC flight was a piece of cake. But looking through the dingy windshield of Pete's Piper, and knowing he was dependent on that same muddy portal for the upcoming unassisted landing, well, it nearly made her sick. She closed her eyes - better. She'd be on the ground in minutes, and later tonight sharing baked salmon and sourdough rolls with Dad.
He had told her not to come. "Strange things happening, Sarah. The lights are early, and the wolves are getting bolder. Had to shoot one last month that attacked a calf up next to the house." That was bad. A wolf that would come that close to take a calf would take a child as well. "You stay where you are this year, and don't be coming back for the holidays. Stay safe."
Sarah might have considered doing that, but she could hear the urgency in his voice, and the underlying fear. Something worse than he would say was going on in Luneqituq. The more she thought about it, the more it preyed on her mind. Dad was her only family now; Mom died about fifteen years ago, when Sarah was just a little girl, and she had no brothers or sisters. Or children. She pushed that thought away.
Another sharp drop, and she grabbed a fistful of seat.
"Coming in for a landing now, Sarah-girl -- ah, what the crap. Hold on." The plane leveled and banked. Sarah peeked through slit eyelids. Pete was rubbing at the dirt-crusted window, but that only proved that most of the dirt was on the outside. "Shit. Moose. Well, this'll just take a minute. What the hell flushed him out into the open in this season, I don't know." Sarah heard a click, then static from a two-way. "Mish! Mishi, come to the phone."
Sarah smiled. Mishi was Pete's very fat and comfortable wife. She'd been nearly a foster mother when Sarah was a teen, teaching her the important parts of being a woman that her father wasn't comfortable with. Her long black braids, woven with white and blue beads and rubbed with fat to make them shine in the old way, framed a loving and kind face. "How is Mishi these days?"
"Ah, still wantin' a kid." He was interrupted by a voice cutting through the static.
"You get my gold wire?"
"Not the time, Mishi."
"Yes or no? Easy question."
Pete sighed. "Couldn't find it. Look, there's a moose on the strip - can you let the dogs out for a minute?"
"You not get my wire and you bother me with this? Buzz him."
"Just let the dogs out, will you?" He clicked the speaker again. "Oh, and say hi to Sarah."
"Sarah? You're home, girl? Pete didn't tell me that! I gotta go let the dogs out."
Pete banked the plane; Sarah knew he was swinging back toward Luneqituq. "I know you hate flying, but you oughta watch this."
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and looked through the dirty window on her left. Pete's house was at the end of the strip, next to where three other planes were parked; as the main pilot in and out, it only made sense. The door opened, and six or seven shaggy sled dogs spilled out and tore across the mud, followed by Mishi waving up at them. The dogs spotted the moose and circled him, barking but maintaining a healthy distance; moose could be dangerous to an unwary dog. Despite the huge animal's reluctance, they herded him across the runway and into the patchy snow to the north, leaving him alone when he broke into a lopsided gallop, heavy horns swinging.
Pete grinned at her. "Nice trick! I got them trained to keep the runway clear. Better than humans or a fence." Sarah gasped and closed her eyes again when the plane dropped. It juttered, then smoothed, then the wheels touched the dirt runway with something approaching grace. Pete had landed in every condition on every kind of runway, and his light touch soon had the plane braked. He turned her around and wheeled toward home, where Mishi was coming to meet him.
The new trick for the dogs, Pete explained, was because of the wolf problem. All kinds of wild game were being flushed from the trees and tundra out into the open. The wolves hunted down a lot of them, but others were left to become prey for human hunters or simply cause a nuisance to the small community. "We set traps and go out to hunt the damned wolves, but they're smarter than humans anymore, it seems. It's like they have advance warning - they hide on hunt days and come out when we've given up. They're getting bold, too. It's not unusual to see one on the street at twilight, and used to be they'd give us miles of space."
Mishi wrapped her arms around Sarah when they stepped out. "Mackie, I missed you! You want some aqutak, I got fresh today."
Sarah smiled, but inside she was grimacing. Aqutak, commonly known as Eskimo ice cream, was mostly snow, animal fat, and a sweetener. She’d never cared for it, any more than she’d cared for Hawaiian crack seed. “No, Mishi, I’m good. Could use some coffee or something, though.”
“Hot chocolate? Got some of that on the stove. Milk’s fresh out of Blondie today.” She led Sarah into the gravel-foundation house they’d built seven years ago. When the sudden heat of indoors hit her, Sarah sighed. She had been spoiled by Hawaii’s always-warm climate, and just flying into Anchorage yesterday had been a shock. Despite her new red parka and heavy boots, the cold seemed to seep into her bones, and the barely-insulated little Piper’s trip had frozen her nearly to the core. The house opened into a mud room, of sorts. A heavy cast-iron Franklin stove rested in one corner, firelight flickering through the bottom grate. A rustic couch, one leg propped up with a book, stretched along a wall, a Pueblo-patterned blanket covering its worn cushions. Pete’s hunting and fishing equipment and other outdoor tools were neatly organized on the other wall. Sarah collapsed on the couch with a sigh. She remembered nights spent here with Mishi and Pete as a girl, when Dad was called out or had to work late on a case. She squirmed out of her coat so she could feel the warmth, then bent to loosen her bootlaces.
“Blondie a new goat?”
Mishi grinned as she ambled over to the cast-iron stove. “Oh, you didn’t meet her. She’s a beauty, soft blond fur. Good milker. I’ve been experimenting with cheese, too, but I haven’t had much luck so far. Always sours on me. Just put up a caribou, though. Good steaks, if you’re staying for dinner.”
“No, I’d rather get right out to Dad.” She smiled. “After I warm up a bit, of course.”
Mishi put the kettle back on the stove. “Pete, you get out there and get me some more wood, you hear?” Pete opened his mouth to protest, but then saw the look on Mishi’s face. As the door closed behind him, Mishi sat next to Sarah and handed her the warm mug. Sarah took a sip; the chocolate was excellent if a little gamey, rich and thick.
“Guess you want to know what’s going on, huh?”
Sarah raised her eyebrows. Mishi had always been one to get to the point. “It would be nice.”
“Your dad’s been working overtime and then some lately. Seems some people gone crazy hereabouts. Got two murders, a couple domestic violence, lot of poaching.”
“Poaching?” Sarah shook her head. “With so much else going on, poaching’s kind of small-time.”
Mishi’s mouth quirked downward, and she looked away. “You’d think. This is a big deal, though. Six bears, two cubs. A couple moose, tagged ones. Some birds.”
“Well, I guess that’s a lot of bears all at once. What’d Dad do when he caught them with the carcasses?”
“He didn’t. They didn’t take the bodies. Just shot ‘em and left them on the ice. Animals got to them, so there wasn’t much left, but the bullets and evidence were still there. Fur was mostly intact, too.”
“That’s weird.”
“Tell me.” Mishi sipped her chocolate.
“So what’s with the murders? Some folks feuding, a claim jump, something like that?”
“Nope. You remember old Brodie?”
That would be Brodie Parson, a cantankerous ancient Canuck who lived on the outskirts of town. “What about him?”
“Poachers shot him too. Left the body laying near two of the bear.”
“That’s awful. What do you think happened - he came across them when they were hunting?”
“Don’t know. That’s part of what your dad’s trying to find out.”
“So is all this why he didn’t want me home?” As she said it, Sarah realized it made no sense. Dad would have told her about the mini crime wave, and that he was too busy for her. His telling her to stay in Hawaii seemed more like fear for her safety than an inability to host her. Mishi was shaking her head, confirming what she thought.
“I think it’s the wolves.”
On the way over to Dad’s, Sarah was quiet. That worked out okay, since Pete was lost in thought too, and had to concentrate on the half-firm permafrost under his wheels. Four-wheel drive or no, the wrong ditch could mire a vehicle for hours. That’s what had happened to Brodie, Mishi had told her. He was on his way to his fishing boat, judging by the gear in his old Jeep, and for some reason drove into a meltoff ditch. He’d been walking away from the accident when something happened, and had only made it a couple hundred feet toward town when he was killed. Gossip had it that he was running away when he died, but Dad and Kyle weren’t saying.
This was not something that happened in Luneqituq, not ever. The most dangerous job she remembered Dad having from her childhood was that time they pulled a moose out of a broke-ice lake. Oh, and the shootout with Annie Moss’s boyfriend; Dad had the gun, the boyfriend had an old crossbow he’d dug up somewhere. Mishi had been wild with worry. That day Dad didn’t pick her up from the Pinters until the June twilight had started, nearly midnight.
“Uh-oh.” Pete started slowing as they topped the rise near the North River. “There’s your dad, sweetheart, but I’m thinking he’s distracted.”
That was probably an understatement. Six emergency vehicles - Luneqituq’s entire complement, plus two from nearby Unalakleet - rested on the side of the road, lights flashing. Kyle Hammond, Dad’s deputy, was running yellow tape around a spot just above a culvert, not quite in a fast-running stream. On the other side of the road, water the color of old mustard rushed into the North River. Pete pulled over and stopped near three other civilian trucks.
“Oh-ah, Jimmy!” Pete yelled, waving. One man, his gray beard brushing the front of his overalls, waved back, said a few more words to Dr. Romanov, and walked over.
“Pete! Hell of a thing.”
“What’s this?”
Jimmy grinned. “I was going upstream to do some panning and I found him by the side of the creek.”
“Another dead guy? Who’s it this time?”
“Don’t know.”
“Stranger? Some tourist, I guess.”
Jimmy’s grin got wider. “Don’t know. He’s got no face.”
Sarah burst out, “No face?”
“You know Sarah, Jimmy? Sarah Mack. Dad’s Sheriff Mack. She just flew in from Hawaii.”
Jimmy nodded at her. “Nicetameetcha. No face. No clothes. No skin a’tall. Doc don’t think he’s been there long.”
Sarah almost spoke, then decided she didn’t want to know how he knew for sure it was a “he.” While Jimmy launched into his story about finding the body, she scanned the scene instead, the way Dad had showed her when he took her out on patrol as a teen. The center of the scene where, she assumed, the body lay was at nearly the lowest part of a shallow gully, right at the high-water mark of the stream. The grass around it was trampled more than it should have been - probably by a crowd who got there when they heard the scanners, not someone involved in what must be a murder. It would have been easy to just toss a body out of a truck here, and if they’d done it in the dark, it was unlikely anyone would have found them. Dad and Kyle were the entire police force, and local people mostly stayed home in the growing autumn dark.
Dr. Romanov knelt near the body, his broad Asiatic face creased with concentration. Sarah watched as he picked up something with tweezers, dropped it in a vial, then took a picture or two. He shook his head and motioned for a couple of burly men wearing work gloves to get the body up.
And then Dad spotted her.
“Sarah Anne Mack! What the hell are you doing here?”
She smiled weakly. “Glad to see you too, Dad.”
He snatched his hat from his head and stepped outside the tape. “Of course I’m glad to see you, but this is no place!” He grabbed her in a bear hug, his short beard tickling her nose as he kissed her forehead. “You don’t need to see this. Bad, bad.”
“Dad. Please. I’m a Marine. I was in Afghanistan. I have seen some pretty ugly things.”
“Not like this.”
“What happened?”
“Wish I knew. Jimmy over there, he’s a prospector been working here about a year. He was walking upstream tracing the source of some gold flake he found a few days ago. Tripped over the guy. Literally. He hasn’t been there too long; a few no-see-ums around him, but no eggs or nothing.” He shook his head. “Look, you really don’t want to see this. Take my keys and drive home, baby. You got a door key, right?” She nodded. “Good, you go then. I’ll come by after we got all this processed and we’ll have a good long visit. Hey, Pete, shoo those people back from the tape - we got enough trampled round here.” He stepped away, already back in crime scene mode.
That was fine with Sarah. Three recent murders now? Luneqituq had fewer than a thousand citizens, even when you included everyone who lived out in the countryside. She didn’t remember more than two murders from the whole time she was growing up, and everyone knew who had done them; in one case, the guy drove the body to the sheriff’s office and turned himself in right there. This was something different.
She drifted around the edge of the crowd, her slight height making it easy to hide behind the burly prospectors and Athabascan natives. Once she was out of Dad’s view, she slipped over and held a peg for Kyle as he got ready to hammer it in. He grinned at her, slight creases at the corners of his eyes stretching all the way to a vast array of freckles.
“Sarah! You’re back in town. Come to see me?” Kyle and she had dated off and on throughout high school, though they were more good friends than lovebirds. She had always found his honest and friendly face appealing, but not sexy; he had made no secret that he found everything about her both appealing and sexy. Still, nothing much had happened, and to be honest, Sarah didn’t regret that. Kyle was more like a brother to her than anything else.
She grinned at him. “You married yet?”
“Nah, still waiting for you. Been talking a lot to Cameron, though.”
“Cameron Mason? Her husband’ll come home from the North Fields and pound you.”
“Yeah, well, he’s been a butt to her lately and she’s thinking about divorcing him.”
“Oh, gosh, I can always find you where there’s trouble, can’t I? Speaking of which, what’s your take on this?” She motioned toward the crime scene, then took another peg from him and positioned it.
“Guy’s skinned, is all I can tell. Whoever did it took the whole thing, scalp with hair, face, all of it. Cut off the hands and, uh, the guy parts, I guess to make sure the whole skin was intact, or maybe it was just easier that way. No clothes, no wallet, nothing to tell us who he is. And whoever skinned him was a pro, regular hunter or something. It’s done well.”
“Why would someone do that?”
Kyle hesitated, then said, “You got me.” He carefully wrapped another length of tape around the new peg. “Your dad know you’re helping me over here, or do I get yelled at in a minute?”
“He wants me to go home. Dude, I shot four Taliban in Afghanistan, killed one. I saw one of my best friends gut-shot, and I got hit with shrapnel myself.” Kemo had taken the brunt of that blast, his large body shielding her from it, and had been medically discharged as a result. Which led to a whole chain of things she didn’t want to think about. “I think I can handle seeing raw meat.”
Kyle snickered, then purposely sobered. “Yeah, that’s about what it looks like.”
“So what does the doctor say?”
“Nothing. He keeps picking bits off and taking pictures, but he’s clammed up tight.”
She nodded. “You got a guy stepping over the tape over there.”
Kyle looked up, then straightened and started moving. “Hey, there, what’re you doing?”
Sarah fastened the last piece of tape herself. Two burly men wearing blue surgical footies zipped up the black bodybag (she’d seen too many of those in Afghanistan) and stepped out of the marked-off area toward the Unalakleet ambulance. Dr. Romanov hunched over the depression left behind, moving things around with long tweezers. “Hey, Doc!”
He looked up, shook his head, and kept poking. Romanov was the only doctor Luneqituq had, as well as the only mortician and coroner. He was surprisingly experienced with crime scene investigation; his hobby when she was growing up had been flying out to Africa and Eastern Europe to help process mass graves, and it was her understanding that he’d published books or articles or something on his experiences. When he was in the middle of something like this, though, he got distracted and forgot little things, like eating. “Hey, Doc, how long you been here?”
Romanov sighed and straightened his back with audible cracks, then peered more carefully at her, a slight smile on his distracted face. “Sarah? You have been here how long?”
“Just got in today.”
“This is better than our last meeting-place, but not much.” Romanov had been one of the experts flown in to process a burial site Sarah’s unit had found, a complete surprise to both of them. She’d seen to it that he and his team had the best of everything the Marines had to offer, though that was mostly MRE rations and clean blankets. His smile disappeared. “What happened to this man, awful. Awful.”
“How’d he die?”
“Come in here to talk. Step here, where I show you.” Romanov directed Sarah along a carefully-proscribed route, then stepped backward away from the depression that had held the body. The grass and ground were deep rust red and gave off a heavy metallic odor. Sarah recognized the smell, though it had blended with smoke and dust and fear back then. She swallowed back her sudden nausea.
“Okay, so what happened?”
“I think they cut his throat. Hard to tell. They killed him up there.” Not tossed out of a truck then, Sarah thought. Romanov pointed toward a high spot that had been included in the crime scene tape. When she looked carefully, she could make out splashes of blood, then a blood slick leading downward.
“How’d he get down here?” She regretted the question immediately. She didn’t want to know the answer.
“Looks to me like he crawled.”
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