Chapter 2-51: No Affiliations to Declare... (2/2)

Sama didn’t hesitate this time, bloody sword still in hand, and stepped up to hack down across her thrust’s wound and send his half-muzzled head rolling away as a last jet of rich red blood sprayed out of the stump.

“Stupid bastard,” Darren Piotrowski swore, rising from the bushes on the other side of the campsite, finally lowering his shotgun.

“He’s part of a Wild Pack. It’s why he didn’t declare it when I challenged him. They exist outside the Anthro Compact. Papa, open that pack and see what he brought here. Chomps, follow me. I need you to tell me what kind of meat she has in her icebox here.”

Her father gave her a sharp look, turned a thoughtful eye on that rucksack, and grimaced despite himself.

This was getting worse and worse all the time...

------

Sama stepped out of the camper, Chomps came down from it, and Sama closed the door behind them.

She looked at the array of clean clothes, magazines, discs, and food packages scattered on the mat before the door.

“Chomps,” she said softly.

The dog obediently went to all the food packages, and sniffed them over. He growled at one of them, with what looked like hamburger in it.

Sama took a package in a Ziploc bag out of her vest pocket grimly.

“Shit,” her father said.

Saying nothing, she went to the corpse of the deputy, patted him down, and drew out his keys, as well as grabbing his wallet.

“Koya Mellienichiev. Sounds Russian...” her father said when he read it.

“Puyorgov does, too. Or at least Slavic. I’m sure they’d be happy to correct us on how it can’t be Russian.”

“We have to check out his car,” Sama said.

“Why?”

“Because it could be even worse than this.”

-------

He was driving his patrol truck for this run, and had left it parked down on the lumber trail, only a mile or so away. Chomps led them right to it, the key opened it up, and they opened the back of it.

The back was lined with a dozen coolers. Sama gave her father a look, saw the dread in his eyes, and pulled the closest one out, opening it. “Chomps.”

The Alsatian-mix stood up on his hind legs to get a good sniff of the contents, and growled softly.

“All of them?” Darren asked, his voice hollow and face ashen.

“Don’t know. But it’s all meat.” Sama closed it and shoved it back into place. “He’s running supplies to someone. There’s two basic probables to that.”

“Do I really want to know?” he asked, staring at the coolers.

“No.”

“Tell me anyways.”

“Either their pack is living wild in the hills close by, or they are a Witchbound clan, and they’re feeding a Hag or a pack up in the hills somewhere.”

Her father closed his eyes. “Godsdammit. You’re right, I really didn’t want to know that.”

“Mmm.”

“What do we do now?”

“The best thing to do is shift their attention from who did this to something else. It’s either that, or bring in the Feds... and that still means we’re going to have to move and sell the farm.”

“All this shit because the damn werewolf let a zombie wander into my farm...” Darren swore, kicking the tires of the truck in frustration. “What, specifically do you want me to do?”

He felt weird taking orders from his daughter. Then again, she seemed utterly unperturbed by this, as if she had been expecting something like this all along. Which, if what she had said earlier was true, totally fit the situation they had found themselves in.

“Whoever he’s delivering to is going to want their food. At some point he’s going to be late, and they are going to go looking for them. They’ll try to ping his phone, or his car, or they’ll scry for him. Then they’ll come here to find out what happened, and they’ll take the food.” She looked further into the hills. “Then I follow and do something about them.”