The Time of The Cat 57

GRAND LAKE

The downhill trip wasn't any easier on the pickup than going up. In order to avoid getting the brakes too hot, I kept the vehicle in second gear and coasted against the motor to keep us from rolling too fast. I'd driven in the mountains before and knew enough to be a little careful. Get your brakes too hot, and you won't stop when you most need to.

We had to go around some steep switchbacks and a couple of times I shifted down to first gear. Jefferson slept most of the way, taking the time to fully relax while everything was safe. He didn't seem worried by my driving, a fact that I found somewhat heartwarming.

Liz glanced down at the snoozing cat and commented, "I wish we could find time to get some rest like that. I feel like I've been on full alert for so long that my nerves are just about fried."

I responded, "Maybe when we reach Grand Lake, we can find a nice place to rest for a while. I don't expect there to be many of the aliens there. This road doesn't really lead to any place that has a large population, and I'm hoping that they've left this area mostly alone."

We finally reached the western gate of the park as we approached Grand Lake. There were a couple of rangers manning the toll station, and they both came out into the road and flagged us down. I rolled down my window as we came to a halt.

"What's going on over there?" asked the older man. "There hasn't been any traffic come through for the past couple of days. Our cars wouldn't start this morning, and we're wondering if we should try to walk back to town."

"Yeah. No one has come to relieve us, and our shift ended at eight. The power's off, and the phones don't work!" complained the woman.

I considered what to tell them and carefully answered, "It's probably best if you both assume that your employment has ended. There's been a nuclear explosion causing an electromagnetic pulse over Kansas, and I'm pretty sure that all electrical and electronic systems across the entire country have been destroyed. Cars mostly won't run unless they are an antique with a mechanical distributor. There's no one else coming across the pass at this time and probably won't be anyone for weeks at the minimum."

The man reacted well to the news, shaking his head and trying to adjust rapidly, but the woman responded differently, "Damn and double-damn it! I'm tired, I want breakfast, and I need to get some sleep. Wait a minute, did you say that our jobs are over?"

"I think that the government, if it still exists, will have other priorities than keeping national parks open," I responded.

The male ranger was thinking ahead and realized that the situation in Denver would be bad. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said, "There may be a flood of refugees coming over the pass."

"Look. There's nothing we can do about it here and now. If you two don't mind riding in the bed, I'll give you a lift into Grand Lake," I suggested.

They wanted to lock everything up, so we waited while they locked doors and their unusable cars. Then we got moving again. It wasn't too far to town. They could have easily walked, but we've become a nation of people who largely won't even consider walking if there's a vehicle available.

We continued down Trail Ridge Road and then turned on West Portal Avenue into Grand Lake. I asked the rangers where they'd like to be dropped off, and they indicated that they wanted to go downtown. That squared with our intent, so we turned onto Grand Avenue and arrived at the center of town just in time to help the townspeople with a Pug-bear.

We pulled up beside a small park-like area that was complete with a gazebo. It was located slightly past the intersection of Garfield Street with Grand, placing it diagonally across the intersection from a large building with a sign that read "Village Center."

The street was wide, and there weren't many cars parked along it in the diagonal parking spaces. As we pulled into one of the parking slots, a couple of cowboys with thirty-thirty's jumped out of the front of the building. One yelled at us, "Get out of here, you fools!"

Right after he shouted at us, his friend took a couple of shots across the street, and we jerked around to look at his target. It was a Pug-bear that was charging wildly back and forth in the park. As the man shot, it spun around in a circle, obviously trying to localize the source of the shots. It stopped and focused on him, then started towards our location.

It didn't get more than about four or five yards when someone down the street, hiding in a mini-golf course, let off a heavy rifle that made the thirty-thirty sound like a pop gun. The Pug-bear made a moan that was almost a squeal and turned that way. I could feel its mental emanation of frustration and anger. It made no progress toward that shooter, either. It was immediately shot in the rump area by another cowboy who was balancing somewhat precariously on the steep roof of a log building located a few yards behind the gazebo.

The alien turned a little more slowly and started back that way. I could see that the combined rifle shots were having an effect on it. There was fluid foaming out of its spiracles, and it was gradually slowing down.

Not wanting to let the cowboys have all of the fun and thinking that this might be a good chance for us to show our value to the community, I reached out mentally and sent a challenge into the Pug-bear's mind. It turned towards me and started back in my direction.

I jumped out of the pickup and yelled, "Cease fire!"

I had to repeat it a couple of times to get the shooters to lower their rifles, but they paused to see what I was going to do.

I thought that I could use my newfound mental ability to confuse the thing, but it proved resistant to my suggestions. I shortly realized that it was so stressed that luring it away with images of food wouldn't work.

The Pug-bear was starting across the road by now. As it approached, I could see that it had the flattened skull of a feral Pug-bear and didn't have the symbiont, so there was no intelligence there for me to influence. My only connection to it was on a bestial level.

I pulled out my splinter-gun and simultaneously sent another aggressive challenge to it. In response, it opened its mandibles and moaned as it crossed the road toward me. It wasn't moving too well. I could see that two of its rear legs had been shot off, and there were some large holes visible in its carapace.

As it opened its mandibles, I fired one shot down its throat. It expired, as had all of the others that had been made to eat one of the poisonous splinters. Its legs quivered as it tried to keep on coming, then it staggered and collapsed right in the middle of the street. It wasn't one of the biggest Pug-bears I'd seen, but it was impressive enough.

The cowboy who'd been shooting from the Town Center came over with his friend, and the one who'd yelled at us said, "That's amazing! We've been having to shoot those damned things twenty or thirty times to kill them and you knock it off with just a little puff gun!"

"What the Hell is that gun, and what's it shoot?" demanded the other.

Liz got out of the truck, holding the cat as the two rangers climbed out of the bed. The rangers had been cowering down, barely peeking over the edge of the tailgate as the action progressed. All three of them came up onto the sidewalk where we were standing.

"It's a splinter-gun. It shoots poison glass needles," she explained as she walked up. "It was made by the aliens and—"

"Wait!" interrupted both of the rangers and one of the cowboys at the same time. "What aliens?"

"Well, that one to start with," I indicated the dead creature. They turned to stare incredulously at the carcass. They obviously hadn't made the mental leap required to associate the creature with another planet.

"Hey! Don't touch its claws or teeth!" Liz was shouting at a couple of adolescents who were squatting down and reaching out to do precisely that. "They're deadly poison. You won't live for more than a few minutes if you touch that stuff."

They acted like they didn't believe her, but one of the cowboys reinforced it by saying, "One of them bastards got Phil yesterday. Stuck its claw in his leg. He died right away. Haven't you kids heard about it?"

"We heard that he'd been killed by a bear or somethun', Matt," one of the two answered.

"It wasn't a bear. It was one of these things!" he pointed.

"Look, Mister," Matt's friend reached out his hand to shake mine. "I think you'd better come inside and meet the Mayor and the Sheriff. We need to figure out some way to kill these things and we need to know what's goin' on in the world. Stuff quit working around here last night, and hardly anybody's got a car that will run."

"None of the lights come on, and the cell phones don't work neither," added the man that had been shooting from the mini-golf course. He'd just come walking up the sidewalk and joined our group.

I could see that he was carrying a Browning rifle that looked like some kind of thirty caliber. "What's the caliber of your gun, friend?" I asked.

"It's only a 30-06. I was kind of hoping that it would do more damage to that thing than it did. People have been shooting them with various smaller guns, and it doesn't seem to damage them much. Pretty hard to get through that thick shell, I reckon," he answered.

"We might have to move up to something like a .338 or maybe a .300 Win-Mag for some better penetration. We'd better get some heavy, solid bullets to shoot at them, too. Hollow points won't penetrate," I replied. "We'll eventually have to kill the things without our alien weapons. We're running low on splinters, and I don't think the local sporting goods store carries any."

I waved my splinter-gun in the air, and they stared at it. Without thinking, I asked, "Haven't you ever seen one of these before?

Then, looking at their faces, I realized that they hadn't. It was kind of embarrassing. I'd been using the things so much that they'd come to seem as comfortable and familiar to me as my Sig. I had forgotten how amazing the weapon had seemed when I first picked it up.