Chapter 24

Chapter 24
“He lives out here?” I said in shock as I threw my leg off of Erik’s bike. The damn thing was so big it hurt a little when I sat on it for very long. “Isn’t this some kind of malarial swamp or something? Ugh.”

I dodged a toad with a last-second hop. When I looked back at the croaker, he just stared at me. I wondered if maybe it was a Jamesburg citizen I avoided smashing, and giggled softly.

“Jenga’s a different breed,” Erik said, a note of disgust in his voice as he swept aside a drapery of Spanish moss. “But he’s not the only one out here. There’s a clutch of were-toads, and Crazy Mary’s house is somewhere around here, in the trees.”

“Wait,” I said with a grin. “Were-toads? You’re serious aren’t you?”

A half-smile and a semi-cocked eyebrow told me that yes, he absolutely was. Two years in the place, and some things still managed to surprise me. I shook my head and stepped over the stump of a tree so old it couldn’t even really be called wood anymore.

“What are you going to do? I mean, he’s got that zombie – er – alpha, or whatever you want to call it. Are you sure he’s not gonna try something stupid?” My foot sunk just a little into a sucking, smelly hole, which luckily was lined with enough moss to keep whatever horror there was under our feet from staining my shoe.

Erik cracked his knuckles. “I doubt he’ll do anything crazy.”

“Oh my God,” I groaned. Honestly, the super-macho thing drove me kinda nuts but it was so achingly ‘Erik’ that I couldn’t help but like it sometimes.

Despite my best intention to keep him from acting like Rambo, I felt a little twinge in the lower part of my stomach. I looked over at him, at his hard-clenched jaws and the slope of his huge shoulders where they joined his tree-trunk neck. The tattooed leaf poking out of his shirt twitched every time Erik tightened and relaxed his jaw, just like the mangroves or banyan trees or whatever they were rustling in the gentle swamp-air breeze.

Something wooden creaked out past the wall of green in front of us, and then slapped against something else.

Erik’s hand shot out and pressed against my chest in a silent warning. He turned to me with a finger on his lips and then looked backward, to where the panther police, one of whom was scratching his neck, along with Jamie and Duggan, were standing.

“Are you sure about this?” I whispered. “What if he’s got the place booby trapped?”

An awful, almost ghostly squeak started up then, and I felt my heart pound in my chest. The pulse in my temples was going right along with it, almost making my vision throb.

“It’s not... he’s turning his generator,” Erik hissed. “If he’s really gone broke, then his generator won’t run without cranking, so he’s probably got some kind of, uh, helper out there doing it for him.”

Looking down, he checked his watch. “It’s just about time for Price is

Right. I can’t imagine he’d miss that.”

I started to giggle, but Erik shushed me with a hand around my mouth and a very stern shaking of his head. “Won’t be booby-trapped,” he said. “But we don’t want to startle him. I’m not in any danger – not really – but the last thing I want is to have my new jacket covered in zombie goo. So keep quiet.”

Nodding, I looked back at the green wall, trying to make out something behind it, but seeing only vaguely human outlines.

“That one’s big,” I said softly, looking at Erik who was focused on the figures.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t want to come up against this.” “What is it?”

“You can see that form through the trees, right? The big one? Going back and forth?” He turned to me, gritting his teeth.

I nodded, wondering what on earth could be bothering him this much when four seconds before he’d been oozing machismo. “Yeah but... you weren’t worried before.”

“I guess in the back of my mind I kinda didn’t believe all the stuff about

Atlas, even with Leon showing off his finger. But...”

“That’s him?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Gotta be. There’s no one that big in Jamesburg. He’s the strongest bear we’ve ever had in town, but... I can only hope that being dead has been a serious detriment to his punching arm.”

A crunching sound made Erik go stiff again. He put his finger back to his lips and crouched, a wolf getting ready to pounce. The figure past the forest wall went still too, and there was an almost palpable tension emanating off Erik.

His muscles were all rock hard, taut and ready to explode. I saw him clench his fist, then relax it. The only time I ever saw him fight before, it was like this: he got as tight as a coiled up spring and then just exploded. Only this time, there wasn’t anywhere, or anyone, to explode at. Not yet anyway.

The figure took two halting, semi-shuffling steps toward our position.

“He heard us, or senses us, or maybe Jenga’s got motion detectors out here or—”

“I thought you said he wouldn’t have any booby traps,” I offered with a little smirk.

Erik raised his eyebrows and stifled a grin. “Somehow he knows we’re here and I don’t think this is going to end easy. I wanted to be done with fighting a long time ago, but I guess sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want.”