-5-
PJ drove his father’s patrol car. His dad had taken the police truck and left the cruiser behind with the key under the visor. The sun was setting, and Sam fretted in the back behind the safety cage.
“So let me get this straight, freckles,” PJ said to Sam, “smugglers walk across the Canadian border and drop bags of cash by a road on this side...?”
Sam nodded. “...then they walk back into Canada, drive to the checkpoint, and come into the U.S. legally with nothing in their car for customs to find.”
PJ grinned. “Then they ease on down the road here on the U.S. side and pick it up. Briiiiiilliant!”
“If your dad catches us, I’m telling him you forced me to come,” Sam said, “and that you have my fireworks.”
“Calm down,” PJ boomed into the car’s intercom. “I didn’t exactly twist your arm. Besides, it’s only ten minutes to the sensor, right? We grab the stuff. Ten minutes back. And...boom! We’re in the green. If the smugglers come, they see the old pig-mobile here and bolt. Worst-case, if dad’s standing in the parking lot with that ‘what are you punks up to?’ look on his face when we get back, we smile, hand over the seized loot, and tell him we heard the alarm and just did his job for him. He gets the credit for the bust and thinks we’re super-duper junior crime fighters. Briiilliant!”
Sam resigned himself to giving PJ directions from the back seat as they drifted along Sumas’s narrow two-lane county roads in Officer Myrmidon’s patrol car. Farmland turned quickly to wooded terrain. The twilight fields gave way to the long shadows of tall trees. Sam pointed out a gravel drive, then a dirt road, then a couple of ruts in the mud that were little more than a path. Darkness began to settle around them as they drove, and shadows crept into the headlights of the cruiser from all directions. The trees grew closer and the underbrush grew thicker as PJ navigated his father’s cruiser deeper and deeper into the woods.
“There’s the sensor,” Sam said finally, pointing to a semi-camouflaged post in the ground. As the car moved closer, Sam nodded. “That’s it all right. I found it exploring when I was running through here once.”
“Running from who?” PJ smirked.
“No comment,” Sam said.
PJ turned the car’s lights out, and the woods around them went dark. “Now we get out to look for the loot, right?” PJ said. He stopped the car and idled in place.
“What if the smugglers are around?” Sam blinked, peering into darkness.
PJ put on one of his father’s spare “POLICE” jackets. “C’mon, we’re already here. Besides, you said it takes an hour round trip to get to the border crossing and back. Any smugglers would probably still be forty minutes away.”
PJ was reaching to put the car into park when Sam saw something move in the darkness. A patch of shadow shifted against a background of dark trees. As soon as he noticed it, it was gone. “What was that?” Sam said.
“What was what?” PJ said, staring into the forest. “I can’t see a thing. It’s pitch black.” PJ reached down and flipped the headlight switch. The sudden light glared on a dark, husky human shape in front of the car. It waved a club-shaped object and brought it down onto the metal hood of the cruiser.
Wham!
“Smuggler!” Sam yelled.
PJ’s foot was still on the gas pedal. He jammed it down instinctively, and the car lurched forward. There was no time for the figure to move. Thud! It went down like a bowling pin and disappeared beneath the bumper.
The police cruiser didn’t travel far. PJ jammed the brake pedal down and the car jerked to a stop. He took a deep breath and quickly locked the door.
“You hit him!” Sam cried.
“I know,” PJ breathed, staring into the woods.
“He’s under the car!”
“I know!”
“What if he’s a farmer or something?” Sam said.
“You’re the one who screamed that he was a smuggler.”
“How do I know who he is?”
“It’s your stupid little town!” PJ snapped.
A low, pained growl rose from beneath the car.
“He’s alive,” PJ said, relieved. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t leave him,” Sam said. “There’s no way he can be okay after you smushed him.”
PJ shook his head. “Dude, I just ran over a guy in a borrowed police car. My instincts tell me to drive far away and never speak of this again.”
“Hit-and-run? They take your license away for that if they catch you.”
“What if he is a smuggler?” PJ protested.
“What if he isn’t?”
Moments later, Sam and a reluctant PJ were crouching on their hands and knees trying to haul the dazed form out from the shadows under the car.
“I found his arms,” PJ said, slapping his dad’s police handcuffs onto a pair of very thick, hairy wrists in the darkness. “Feels like the dude’s wearing gloves. Help me get him into the back seat.”
Sam helped PJ pull, and the dark shape slid completely out from under the car. It was heavy and limp, but Sam could hear its uneven panting. There was life. They wouldn’t be able to see any injuries, though, until they got it up under the dome light in the backseat.
“He’s heavy,” Sam reported, wrestling the lower torso of the slack body up off of the ground.
PJ took hold of the arms he’d cuffed together in front of its body and heaved the figure up into the back seat. It was over five feet tall, incredibly heavy, and smelled vaguely of dirt. Suddenly, it snorted like a pig and began to raise its arms. PJ yelped and put his shoulder against it. Sam jumped in to help, grabbing a leg and wrenching it awkwardly through the cruiser door. Together, they shoved the entire thing into the car, then PJ slammed the door shut. “There!”
“Am I nuts,” Sam said, panting, “or was that guy wearing a fur coat?”
“Don’t know,” PJ said, “I was too busy trying not to let him kill us with this.” PJ held up a spiked club that had fallen on the ground. It was a primitive weapon. It seemed to be made of hard stone, yet it weighed no more than a couple of pounds, and it had nasty barbs all over it.
“A weapon,” Sam said. “So he is a smuggler.”
“What kind of smuggler carries a medieval mace?” PJ said.
“A fat, hairy one?” Sam shrugged, and he tapped on the window like a kid peering into a fishbowl.
Suddenly, the figure rose up in the back seat and threw its palms against the window. Thick, black fur covered its entire body. Its hands were leathery, like those of a gorilla, and its fingers were tipped with long, yellow claws. It pushed its face up against the glass and stared back at Sam and PJ with huge yellow eyes. Two long tusks jutted up from its lower jaw. It was not wearing a fur coat, and it was definitely not human.
Sam and PJ leapt back. They stood speechless for a time as the thing blinked its saucer eyes and glowered at them. Finally, the boys turned to each other.
“Now what?” PJ asked.
“We can’t let it out here.” Sam said, pointing nervously at its long claws. “What if it comes after us?”
“If we can’t let it out, and we don’t want to sit out here alone with it in the dark woods, then what do you suggest we do?”
Minutes later, the police car eased along the dirt road, out of the woods, and back toward the police station with both boys in the front and their strange, furry passenger behind the safety cage in the rear.
Behind them, back in the woods, a three-foot wide square of grass beside the sensor post shifted, then tilted upward on a hinge—a trapdoor in the forest floor. Beneath it, two sets of human eyes peered out after the receding vehicle’s tail lights.
– End Chapter Five –
