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  Mostly, she couldn’t wait to see a street light.

  Because the noise was back, closer, to the right now.

  “You heard that?”

  “No.” He said it so firmly that it sounded like self-denial.

  “It’s closer.”

  His face contorted in the dying orange orb of light. “Listen, Carolyn. This is the twenty-first century, not the goddamned ‘Blair Witch Project.’ In real life, people don’t get stalked by cannibalistic hillbillies or eaten by wild animals. And, last I heard, aliens don’t have secret landing sites in the Appalachians. That’s the Southwest desert, remember? Ergo, there is nothing following us and I’m trying to solve this little problem you created and get us safely back to civilization.”

  Leaves rustled ten feet ahead of them, behind a gnarled evergreen. Despite herself, Carolyn moved closer to Elliott and clung to his arm. He stiffened and smirked.

  “I’ll get us out of here,” he said. “Have I ever let you—”

  The pen light died and darkness rushed in like water flooding a ruptured bathysphere. It was almost as if the light had warded off the other sounds of the night, because the still air was filled with chirring, scratching, and creaking. Beneath those came the ragged whisper of breathing.

  Carolyn’s eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight just in time to see a large black shadow hover beyond Elliott, then her husband was ripped from her grasp. He gave a wet gurgle, as if a freshet had erupted between the granite stones of his face. One of his legs flailed out and struck her kneecap, and he gave a bleat of pain. Drops of liquid spattered on Carolyn and she screamed.

  The air stirred above her head and she looked up to see a curved and dripping grin of metal catch the distant eye of the moon. The grin descended and bit with a meaty thunk, and all Carolyn could think was that the meat must have been her husband, that arrogant engineer with a fondness for college football, the Bush clan, plasma television, and pharmaceutical stocks.

  The scream jumped the wires from her brain to the ganglia low in her spinal cord, a place encoded during the Paleozoic Era when flight meant survival and the higher thinking processes shut their useless yammerings.

  She ran blindly, branches tearing at her hair, heedless of the trail’s direction. The moist hacking continued behind her, but she scarcely heard, because her eardrums protected her high-order brain. She was an animal, scrambling through the leaves, guided by instinct as she ducked under branches and dodged between scaly oaks and beech. She couldn’t see but she didn’t need to see, because her eyes were jiggling orbs of dead weight in her skull and a more primitive sight led her onward. All knowledge was in her skin, mind given over to flesh, she was aware of nothing but the roar of wind through her throat and the pulse in her temples and the dark sharp thing at her back and—

  She didn’t see the maple with the low branch, because her eyes had shut down, but she did see the bright yellow and green sparks that exploded like fireworks on the movie screen of her forehead.

  Carolyn was unconscious as the goats gathered around her, and her useless, high-order brain stayed mercifully absent as her true-blue Republican blood leaked into the land of legends.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The general store was crowded with a mix of locals and tourists. Odus, his ball cap tipped low and a toothpick between his teeth, stood by the sandwich counter and waited as Sarah rang up the purchases of a chubby boy in too-tight nylon biking shorts and tank top. The customer’s shoulders were pink and peeling, the sign of a spoiled city boy getting too much sun on vacation. The boy’s dad stood beside him in a red sweat suit that was meant to portray athleticism, but instead gave the impression of a sausage that was about to bust out of its skin. Sarah bagged the boy’s mound of candy bars, pork rinds, and lollipops.

  A bluegrass band was tuning up in the park across the road. A Solom community group had bought four acres along the river that was now cleared and grassed, with a band shell at one end. From early summer until the end of October, weekly shows were held in the park. The music was either bluegrass or traditional old-timey, though the general store hosted occasional debates about the difference between the two labels. Odus picked some mandolin himself, and even sat in on some local recording sessions, but he didn’t like performing in front of people.

  Sarah looked away from the register and frowned at him. He gave a small nod that said, “We need to talk after you take care of business.”

  Sarah paid rapt attention to the customers, smiling as if she appreciated them for more than just their money. A six-pack of Mountain Dew, two cups of overpriced coffee, a microwave burrito, a honey bun, a bottle of sun block, a rustic bird house, a basket made of entwined jack vine, a stack of Doc Watson CDs, and two bags of Twizzlers changed hands before Sarah got a break. She picked up a dusting cloth, came to the sandwich counter, and began wiping down the dewy glass.

  “You had me worried,” he said.

  “Don’t waste a good worry on me.”

  Normally Odus wouldn’t. Sarah Jeffers was tougher than beef jerky and had the backbone of a mountain lion. But toughness and spine didn’t matter when you were standing up against something that ought not be. Odus ground the end of his toothpick to splinters as he spoke around it. “I seen him.”

  “Seen who?” Sarah said, suddenly taking a great interest in the chub of gray liverwurst. Odus didn’t see how anybody could eat that stuff. Bologna was okay, but he preferred good and honest meat, like ham, that looked the way it did when it came from the animal.

  “We both know who,” he said.

  A tan, Florida-thin blond approached the cash register, pigtails tied with pink ribbons. She wore a T-shirt that read, “This dog don’t hunt.” In her hands were a gaudy dried flower arrangement and a miniature wooden church, no doubt decorations for a seasonal second home. Sarah’s face relaxed in relief as she went to ring up the sale.

  “Are you the storyteller?” a voice behind him asked.

  He turned and faced a man wearing sunglasses who held a cassette tape as if filming a commercial. Odus was on the cover, dressed in his folksy garb of denim overalls and checked flannel shirt. He’d even borrowed a ragged-edged straw hat for the photo because the university woman who had recorded it said the package needed what she called a “hook.” Odus didn’t know a damned thing about marketing, but he knew stories from eight generations back.

  The Hampton family had passed along the Jack tales, in which Jack usually put one over on the old King. “Jack and the Beanstalk” was the best-known of the stories, but that one didn’t have a king in it. The university woman said they were parables in which the Scots-Irish who settled the Southern Appalachians were able to get proxy revenge on their English oppressors. Odus didn’t feel particularly oppressed by anybody in England, except maybe when Princess Diana got all that attention for getting killed, but he figured the university woman was a lot smarter than he was about such things.

  “I did some telling on that one,” Odus said. The tape was called “The Mouth of the Mountain.”

  “So you’re a celebrity.” The man was eating a Nutty Buddy ice cream cone and a string of white melt rolled down the back of his hand. He licked it up.

  “Not really. I just talked. The woman who made the tape did all the work.” Odus looked over at Sarah, who was busy taking money for a gee haw whimmy-diddle, a folk toy that basically consisted of three sticks and a tiny nail. Retail value: $6.99 plus tax.

  “Do you tell them in public? We’re going to be up for two weeks and would love to hear some authentic Appalachian stories.”

  “They ain’t authentic,” Odus said. “They’re all lies.”

  The man laughed, ejecting a tiny peanut crumble that arced to the floor at Odus’s feet. “That’s good. I’m buying this one, and I’m sure I’ll be pleased. If you’re not holding any performances, can I hire you to come down and tell some stories around the campfire in our backyard?”

  Sweat pooled in Odus’s armpits. He didn’t mind telling
the stories to family or his few close friends, and he could even put up with talking them into a microphone, but the idea of spinning out some Jack yarns while a bunch of tourists yucked it up and sipped martinis was more than he could stand. “I don’t do tellings in a crowd,” Odus said.

  “This won’t be a crowd. Just us and the neighbors. Maybe ten people.”

  “Ten’s a crowd.”

  The man looked at the tape. “Fifteen dollars for this, huh? I’ll pay a hundred dollars for one hour.”

  Odus thought of the wallet in his back pocket, the leather folds so bare a fiddleback spider wouldn’t hide in them. A hundred bucks would buy a case of decent whiskey, and decent whiskey would maybe drown out those dreams of the cheese-faced man in the black hat. From the park, the sounds of the string band blared from the PA speakers. “Fox on the Run,” complete with three-part harmony.

  The man was mouthing the waffle cone now, running his thick, pink tongue around the cone’s rim.

  “I’ll have to think on it a spell.”

  The sunglasses hid the man’s expression, which could have been disbelief or impatience. Odus didn’t much care. It wasn’t like losing a steady job or anything. If he’d even wanted a steady job, that was.

  “I’ll listen to the tape and get back to you,” the man said. “What’s the best way to reach you?”

  Odus took the toothpick from his mouth and pressed the tip into his callused thumb. “I don’t have no phone. Usually you can find me here at the store or around.”

  The man smiled, vanilla cream on his upper lip. “Okay, ‘Mouth of the Mountain.’ Have it your way.”

  He went to pay for the tape. He left the store and Odus watched through the screen door as the man made his way to the park.

  “Sold a tape,” Sarah said. “There’s another buck-fifty for you.”

  “Except I don’t get it for six more months,” Odus said. “That royalty thing.”

  Sarah took a five out of the cash register and held it out to him. “I’ll report that one as damaged. Call it an advance.”

  Odus swallowed hard and went to the counter. The store was quiet. An elderly couple was browsing in the knick-knacks and a kid faced tough choices at the candy rack. Odus reached out and took the bill, but as he pulled his hand away, Sarah grabbed his wrist with all the strength of a possum’s jaws.

  “Take it and buy you a bottle, and forget about it,” Sarah said. “You ain’t seen nothing, and I ain’t seen nothing.”

  Their eyes met. Odus, at six feet two and 240, somehow seemed to be looking up at Sarah, who stood all of five feet and weighed in at 100 soaking wet.

  “He’s back, and getting drunk won’t change that.”

  “Getting drunk never changed anything, but that never stopped you before.” Sarah let go of his wrist. “Don’t go blabbing it or people will think your brain finally pickled and they’ll throw you in Crazeville to dry out.”

  “The people I tell it to will believe me, because they’ll know.”

  “I heard what you told that man. Your stories ain’t authentic, they’re lies.” Sarah began fussing with the cigarette packs and cans of smokeless tobacco behind the counter.

  “The biggest lies are the easiest to swallow,” Odus said. “But they burn like hell when you puke them back up.”

  He went out into the sunshine and the last chorus of “Fox on the Run.”

  ***

  Jett stood by the pay phone in the school lobby, fumbling in her pocket-sized purse. Many of her classmates, especially the girls, had their own cell phones, but Gordon thought they were a “distraction to learning.” As if she couldn’t get Brittany to text-message the answer to a quiz question. Phones were tools and were here to stay, so why couldn’t Gordon get with the future already?

  Because he was lame, that’s why. She pulled out the phone card her dad had given her as a present when she and Mom left Charlotte. “Five hundred minutes, call any time,” he’d said. Actually, he probably didn’t mean any time, since he’d started dating the blonde librarian. Mandy, Mindy, Bambi, something like that. Lots of checking out going on there, probably.

  Noise leaked from the lunch room, typical middle-school jokes, flirting, the rattle of silverware on hard vinyl trays. She pressed her ear to the phone and punched in her card digits, waded through the operator’s asking if she wanted to donate minutes to the troops, then entered the numbers for Dad’s work.

  “Draper Woodworking and Design,” the female voice said.

  “Could I get Mark Draper, please?”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  “Jett. Jett Draper.”

  “Oh.” Uttered with a tone of sympathy.

  After thirty seconds, Dad came on the line, bluff and hearty and probably stoned. “What’s up, pumpkin? Aren’t you in school?”

  “Yeah. It’s lunch time. I have five minutes before the bell rings.”

  “How’s it going? Did you get my letter?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the money. It really saved my sanity.”

  “I’ll send some more soon.”

  “No, I’m fine. Really.”

  “Are you liking Solom any better now that you’ve had some time to get settled?”

  “It’s all right. A little slow, but you get used to it.”

  “Made any friends?”

  She thought of her drug connection, the goats, the man in the black suit, the kids on the bus, creepy old Betsy Ward. “Yeah. I’m fitting right in.”

  Her dad’s tone turned serious. “And your mom? Is she okay?”

  “Actually, that’s what I called about.”

  “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

  “I’m afraid she’s starting to lose it.”

  “Lose it?”

  “Yeah. She’s, like, not Mom. Like some alien came down and took over her brain. She’s changed so much in the last few weeks. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s the same person who told me that life sends messages in invisible balloons.”

  “She’s going through an adjustment period. She’ll be fine once—”

  “Don’t give me that counselor babble horse shit, Dad.”

  “Jett.”

  “Sorry. It just blurted out.”

  “I can tell you’re upset. Calm down and tell me what she’s up to.”

  “She stares off into space. I’ll walk into a room and it’s like she’s forgotten what she was doing, or like she’d been in the middle of a daydream and I woke her up. She’s totally changed her wardrobe and—this might be weirdest of all—she’s started cooking. And I don’t mean beanie weenies and frozen waffles. I’m talking honest-to-God recipes.”

  “Well, if you’ll forgive the counselor babble, I’d guess she’s trying hard to make things work with her new husband.”

  “You sound sad about it, Dad.”

  “We had our chance and blew it. Things just didn’t work out. But—”

  “I know, I know, it’s not my fault and it had nothing to do with me.”

  “I know it’s tough on you, honey. Getting along with Gordon okay?”

  She didn’t know whether to lie or not. Dad shouldn’t have asked, or maybe it was his way of showing he cared about her. It was an uncomfortable subject. Gordon had wanted her to take the Smith name, but she’d balked. Mom had sided with her, of course, but not too vocally. “He’s been a hard case but Mom says he just wants what’s best for me. But I don’t think him and Mom are getting along too well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She could tell he wasn’t. She didn’t understand much about boy-girl stuff, except she was smart enough to know that you wanted to forever own the one you loved, even if it was bad for both of you. “He’s not mean or anything, just cold. Not to get too personal, but he never kisses her.”

  “They’ll work it out. I’m more worried about you. I hate to ask, but how are things going with the drugs?”

  “Fine.” She realized she’d snapped at him, and that was the worst possible thing to do, bec
ause it would make him suspicious. “They haven’t even invented drugs up here yet. It’s like the 1800s. Plowing with mules, no electricity, a church down every dirt road. Nothing but clean air and sunshine.”

  “Good for you, pumpkin. I don’t mean to pry, but I’m your dad. It’s still my job, even if we’re over a hundred miles apart.”

  The bell rang, its brittle metallic echo bouncing off the concrete block walls. The traffic in the hall picked up, a few of the guys giving her the eye, no doubt because of her black lipstick. “Got to go to math,” she said.

  “Love you. Keep in touch, and tell your mom I said hello.”

  For a moment, Jett almost told about the man in the black hat, but Dad would either think she was cracking up or in serious need of some counselor babble horse shit. Ditto with the menacing goats. Just thinking of them made her a little light-headed, as if such things were never real unless you spoke of them. Better to just ignore them, pen them up behind the walls of Stoner City. “I love you, too, Dad. Bye.”

  She wiped her eyes, careful not to smudge the liner, and waded into the hallway crowd.

  ***

  Carnivorous goats.

  Sounded the fuck like a cheesy zombie movie to Alex Eakins. He could dig zombies, even cheer for them in a way, because when you got down to it, those gut-munching things from beyond the grave were about the most libertarian creatures around. Talk about your free-market economies. But goats were another matter.

  Alex was smart enough to be aware of his eccentric nature. His parents were afraid he was turning into a survivalist who would one day construct an armed bunker and have a stand-off with federal agents. But the true survivalist didn’t want to be noticed by the government, much less stage a confrontation. And a true survivalist didn’t go around ranting about man-eating goats, because that was a sure-fire way to get noticed.

  So Alex would have to figure out how to handle this on his own. The first order of business was a trip to the general store to get a few reels of barbed wire. He could add another couple of runs around the perimeter of his property as a first line of defense. His gun rack held a .30-.30, a 16-gauge Remington shotgun, and a .22 so his girlfriends could participate in target practice. He had his bow and arrows, a slingshot, and a couple of sticks of dynamite he’d bought under the table at the last Great Tennessee Border Gun Show. Plus there was the contraband arsenal in his secret room. So goats, even a herd of them, were not something to lose sleep over.