Night Terrors: Savage Species, Book 1 (10 page)

Colleen made a disgusted face. Emma said, “Maybe we should wait outside.”

She rose and stepped over to the door. “Mr. Red Elk, we’ll come back later if—”

A groan and another messy, splashing sound.

“We’ll come back,” she said.

Chapter Nine

Jesse was sure Frank Red Elk was the weirdest thing he’d see all day, but when he and the girls came through the pine trees and beheld the large, circular playground, he knew this sight was in contention. They’d heard the music from nearly a mile away and smelled the beer the moment they climbed out of the car. But this…

Jesse regarded Emma, who was laughing softly.

A hundred or so young men and women covered the playground equipment and the areas between in a bulging mass of skin. Granted, it was hot—probably eighty degrees already with humidity that made you feel greasy all over—but the bikinis the girls wore would’ve been risqué for the French Riviera. A few boys wore costumes: togas made of old sheets, heads swaddled in unconvincing turbans. One guy had fashioned an oversized diaper out of a pink blanket. The rest appeared dressed for the beach.

Jesse realized Colleen was no longer with them. He looked around and spotted her next to a row of five beer kegs lined up under a pavilion in the playground’s center. An overweight young man, his tanned, hairless belly spilling over a tiny red Speedo, filled a plastic cup of beer and handed it to her. She drank, wiped off the foam mustache and beckoned them over.

The music originated from a red pickup truck stationed at the southern edge of the circular playground. Someone, thank God, had replaced the rap music with Van Halen’s “Runnin’ with the Devil”.

To their right a group of guys were spotting scantily clad girls as they breezed across the playground on a zipline. Immediately opposite the zipline, several people played on the swings and took turns looping down a curly slide. Jesse saw as they neared that a large group had gathered to watch people doing keg stands. At the moment a big-breasted girl, her light blue bikini barely preventing her boobs from suffocating her, was standing on her head sucking down beer. The onlookers chanted for her to drink. Just when Jesse was sure she’d bust out of her top, the girl brought her legs down, swayed a moment, then dashed for the pine grove that surrounded the playground.

“Lightweight!” one guy yelled.

As they pulled up next to Colleen, another drinker took the last one’s place. Jesse recognized the spiked blond hair, the washboard stomach from the night before.

Austin favored Emma with a broad grin, and with an athleticism Jesse couldn’t help but admire, Austin leaned down, his spikes embedding in the sand, and popped up in a headstand. Another guy, the one with the black goatee, fed the tube into Austin’s mouth. The crowd started chanting, “Go! Go! Go! Go!” the young man’s throat working furiously to ingest the flow of beer.

“Fifteen seconds,” the goateed guy shouted, and everyone cheered. Austin remained upside down several moments longer before spluttering out beer and scissoring his legs to the ground.

He gave Emma another grin and exchanged high fives and fist bumps with the adoring crowd.

Jesse watched him sullenly. Wasn’t it enough the guy was great-looking? Did he have to drink like a champion and move like a professional athlete too? He wondered idly if Austin was the kid’s first or last name, but he was too annoyed to ask.

“Here you go,” a voice from behind them said.

They all three turned and saw the muscle-bound guy holding out a pair of plastic cups. Emma and Jesse both took one.

“Come swing with me?” Musclehead asked Emma.

“Maybe in a little while,” Emma said.

He nodded and ambled toward a pair of guys tossing a football back and forth.

Emma asked Colleen, “How’s the beer?”

“Tastes like bear piss,” Colleen said.

“Suits me,” Emma said and drank.

Jesse hesitated. He normally enjoyed beer, had drunk plenty of it in college, but his stomach gurgled at the prospect of getting a buzz at—he checked his watch—ten thirty in the morning.

Colleen was watching him, the challenge plain on her face.

He drank.

She was right. It tasted like bear piss.

“I see you found the party,” a jovial voice called.

They turned and watched Gordon Clevenger, Marc Greeley and the one named Ruth approach.

Clevenger patted Jesse on the shoulder. “Has the lovely park ranger been by?”

“Not yet,” Colleen said. “She’s still hair spraying her bangs.”

Greeley was looking around uneasily. “You don’t think the older campers will complain about the noise?”

Clevenger shrugged. “There’s enough of a buffer zone between here and the RVs for the senior citizens to enjoy their canasta.”

A pretty girl wearing a tiara and a snug black bikini appeared and handed the professor a beer. “Ah,” he said, “thank you, Your Highness.”

Her smile flared brighter, and she turned it on Greeley a moment before rejoining another girl on a teeter-totter.

“Drink,” Emma said.

Jesse turned to her and felt a little queasy at the way she was watching him. Her brown eyes remained locked on his, but her expression was inscrutable.

He drank. She did too. As the beer entered his stomach, some of his nervousness began to dissipate. He drank again. Emma did too.

“Want me to sign your toga?” they heard Colleen ask.

A mountainous guy—he had to be a lineman on the football team—had appeared beside Colleen. His eyes were recessed, his brow protuberant. He looked like an overgrown and not particularly intelligent child. Jesse noticed the black Sharpie in his hand, the signatures all over the white sheet he wore. The sheet wasn’t nearly large enough for him, but when coupled with his prodigious size, the guy reminded Jesse of an evil gladiator in some sword-and-sandals epic. Or a villain from the Old Testament.

Goliath handed Colleen the Sharpie. She accepted it, grasped him by the waist and drew him closer. She grabbed the white fabric over his crotch, lifted it, and signed her name. Goliath grinned widely, exposing two missing front teeth.

“You wanna drink with us?” he asked Colleen.

“Why not,” she answered, and she was gone.

Jesse turned to Emma and felt his stomach lurch. Greeley had led her toward the merry-go-round.

You son of a bitch
, Jesse thought. He knotted his fists, took a step toward Greeley.

“Maybe you should drink a little first,” a voice at his shoulder suggested. He turned and saw Clevenger smiling sympathetically.

“There are plenty of girls here,” Jesse said through clenched teeth. “Why does your assistant have to hit on Emma?”

“Because she’s the prettiest, I suspect. And she even has a brain.”

“He doesn’t deserve her.”

Clevenger nodded. “You’re probably right.”

Emma laughed at something Greeley said. The tall man had begun to spin her slowly on the merry-go-round.

Clevenger folded his hands behind his back. “If Greeley tries to take advantage of her, you have my permission to beat him to a pulp. Until then, how about that beer?”

“Make it two,” Jesse said and followed him to the keg.

He was drunk by noon.

It snuck up on him, the way it always did now that he was no longer a college student. Somewhere between his third and fifth cup of beer, he’d begun to feel a pleasant tingle at the base of his neck. He’d joined Professor Clevenger, who turned out to be a horror movie buff, in a spirited debate about which was the best
Evil Dead
movie. But when he excused himself to refill his cup, he had to freeze, his arms held aloft, while the entire playground canted like a storm-tossed ship. For one terrible moment he was certain he would vomit all over the sand, and wouldn’t that be a great way to impress Emma? He closed his eyes to stop the world from tilting, and in the distance heard the rumble of thunder. Then, a soothing breeze began to waft over him, the storm front moving in. He opened his eyes to see that the sun had been obscured by an ominous wall of clouds, and though the sky at that moment was overcast, the farther east he gazed the darker the clouds grew.

Jesse felt a flutter of apprehension. He turned and beheld Ruth, Clevenger’s mousy TA, surveying him from the shadows of the spruce trees. A flicker of anger passed through him, but after a moment he realized it was because he associated this woman with Greeley, the jackass who’d stolen Emma. He forced himself to relax, to not hold Ruth’s association with Greeley against her. Jesse smiled. When she realized he’d noticed her, Ruth straightened, and a hint of color rushed into her pasty face.

“You must be Professor Clevenger’s assistant,” Jesse said, going over.

“Ruth Cavanaugh,” she said. With a half-hearted smile, she added, “Sorry about the staring thing. I’m feeling kind of out of it today.”

Jesse felt large standing next to the girl. He guessed she’d have a hard time breaking a hundred pounds. “Don’t you feel well?”

“It’s the oddest thing.”

She hugged herself, massaging the shoulders of her green shirt. Like her long black skirt, it was made from some thick material, which meant the girl should have been roasting in this heat. But Ruth shivered, hugged herself tighter.

“Hey,” Jesse said, putting a hand on the back of her shoulder. “You okay?”

At his touch she peered up at him with an odd, penetrating look that, had they not just met, Jesse would have taken for lust.

Then the reticence bled back into her face. She looked away, said, “I’ve felt strange since last night. I went hiking in the bluffs…” She shook her head, laughed mirthlessly. “Stupid thing to do, I know. Going off by myself like that. But the caves…there were such interesting sounds in there. Such…
emotions
.”

Jesse watched her uneasily. “What sort of sounds?”

“It must have been a bat. Or a bunch of them. One minute I was standing before an immense tunnel. I shined my flashlight down its length, but it seemed to go on and on. Then I became aware of a sound. Then there were many sounds. The next thing I knew the cave was full of strange shapes—huge, monstrous shapes—and then I was lying on my back, this terrible stinging all over my chest.”

Jesse hesitated. A brief image of the night before tickled uneasily at his memory. The black shape swooping over him by the river…the slow beat of vast wings…

“Did something attack you?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Emma said. “But I’ve had the most peculiar sensations and…
thoughts
since then. My dreams last night were full of…I haven’t had dreams like that since I was little.” Her eyes flitted upward. “It was like being a superhero.”

Jesse waited for the rest of it, but Ruth had fallen silent.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

Her eyes, for the briefest of moments, held a glaze of mockery. Then it was gone. “I’m fine, Jesse. I just need to rest.”

She moved away from him, and watching her go, Jesse realized something that disquieted him. He hadn’t told her his name.

So? She heard it from Clevenger. Or Greeley.

Jesse supposed that made sense, but the unease persisted. He pushed it aside and faced the playground.

Now
, he thought,
where to find Emma
?

He glanced about, locating the rest of the usual suspects: Goliath pushing Colleen on a swing; Austin and Goatee doing body shots with a quartet of hotties; Clevenger regaling a group of students with some story; Tiara Girl, Light Blue Bikini, and another girl lying on a beige blanket, their brown bodies a curvy tableau of sweaty flesh; Ruth Cavanaugh sitting sadly on a large rock.

No sign of Emma or Greeley.

He was both surprised and embarrassed at the tightness in his chest.
What the hell?
an incredulous voice demanded.
You gonna cry because your dream girl decided to have a quickie with a handsome stranger?

She’s not having sex with him.

Deal with it
, the voice taunted,
and quit being such a baby. If you looked like Greeley, she’d have sex with you instead. So why don’t you stop with the self-pity and hook up with someone too? Preferably some girl who’s more your speed
.

But try as he might, he couldn’t ward off the sense of betrayal. What had been a cheerful buzz was now a sour weariness.

Dammit, Emma
, Jesse thought.
Why’d you have to do it this weekend?

He knew she dated. How could a girl that perfect stay at home all the time? But as long as he wasn’t aware of her social life, he could maintain the fantasy that she was waiting for him. But to meet a guy right in front of Jesse’s face and go off with him…

He needed to urinate.

Jesse meandered past the kegs and through a game of cornhole. Though the beanbag fluttered by Jesse’s face, missing him by only an inch or two, no one commented on his passing. He heard thunder again, louder this time, and continued on.

His sneakers stepped from the mulch to the wide concrete sidewalk encircling the playground. He moved slowly around the perimeter until he spotted a break in the pine trees. Sidling through the gap, he moved fifty feet or so up a gentle rise and stopped, his back to the playground. If he turned, he could take in the view of the partying, of all that female flesh.