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Small Town Monsters

7

unexplainable.”

Kurt rolled his eyes.

“This doesn’t look like surgery,” Clay said and crouched down on his haunches next to another of the animals. The sheep’s throat was torn out, leaving its head to lie back at an obscenely unnatural angle. A gust sent a waft of fetid decomposition to Clay’s nose; he struggled with nausea and raised his handkerchief to his face.

“You’re right; this isn’t surgery. This is the other kind of mutilation,” Buren said.

“These tracks are only a few hours old,” Clay said, touching one of the padded wolf-like impressions in the ground. Only a micro-layer of dust had blown into the freshly packed clay. “They look wolf to me.”

“T’aint no wolf,” Buren said, turning abruptly toward the deputy and putting his hands on his hips. “It’s el chupacabra.”

“I’ll put a warning out to the other ranchers,” Kurt said through his white handkerchief.

“A warning ain’t gonna help,” Buren said.

“Buren,” Kurt leveled his blue eyes at the rancher. “I don’t want any talk of el chupacabra, aliens, or anything else. What we’re looking at here is a wolf attack and nothing more. I don’t want you stirring those who can be stirred up with your fantasies.”

“I can prove it.” Buren pointed back over his shoulder with a crooked thumb.

Kurt sighed. “Fine. Show me your proof.”

Buren led the two policemen through the death field, sidestepping corpses and leaping over pools of bloodied clay. They stopped at a grouping of five slain animals that were mutilated more brutally than the others. The flesh of the five had been ripped from their skeletons to reveal racks of sinewy ribs and discarded guts.

Clay retched.

“Can you control that, deputy?” Kurt said.

“Sorry.”

Kurt had to admit, it seemed that something extra cruel