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  “Mother-fu…”

  The creature’s jaws cracked shut, engulfing Dan’s upper body. His legs spasmed briefly only once as his thorax and head were ground to paste between the beast’s enormous jaws. With its prey finally stilled, it began to feast.

  ***

  Wiping the last smear of blood from the cooler, Antoine DePascal noticed that Dan still hadn’t returned from garbage detail and looked at his watch. The kid had been gone almost half an hour. Enough was enough, he decided. He’d had his fill of the lazy little slacker! If the kid wasn’t finished picking up the garbage by the time he got out there, then the little bugger was going to be out of a job!

  Antoine stormed out of the kitchen, one of his size fourteen feet booting open the delivery door as he went. It smashed into the red-bricked wall behind. Pausing, he kicked a yellow milk crate out of the way and watched with some satisfaction as it spun across the ice before disappearing into the mist.

  The heavy steel door behind him suddenly slammed into its frame as it swung to a close. In spite of his size, DePascal flinched at the sudden noise. The kid had been really freaked out about the garbage bin, and it was making him jumpy now that he thought about it. Entering the fog, he began to wonder if maybe there might have been something to what the kid was saying after all.

  The bin materialised out of the greyness in front of him. He glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of the kid. The flashlight lay on the ground at the side of the bin. He bent down and picked it up, turning it on — still operational. It looked like the little bastard had buggered off, skipping out on the clean-up job.

  “That’s fine, play it that way, kid. You’re gone!” he shouted. He glanced into the bin to see if the kid was inside, playing hide and seek. God knows, he wouldn’t put it past him, but it was empty. He peeked around the corner of the bin, the fog swirling around him as he moved. No Dan there, either. Turning around, he called into the fog, “You never were the brightest bulb on the tree, anyway, you little slacker!”

  As if in agreement, the sodium vapour climaxed toward brilliance once more, then gutted out, suffering another near-death experience.

  “Son of a bitch…” Squinting into light the colour of concentrated urine, Antoine saw that the steel lid of the dumpster was indeed bent back, just like the kid had said. It had to have been the work of vandals. But why would they do something like that? He shook his head in disgust. Kids these days.

  Speaking of kids, it looked like Dad had missed quite a bit of shit as there still looked to be an awful lot of little bits and pieces scattered about. No garbage bags left on the ground at least, just a quite a few white, pasty scraps. So typical of the half-assed job the kid usually did.

  “Lewis! Where the hell are you? Why didn't you finish the job?” he inquired into the fog. “I swear to God, if you’re screwing around out here and toking up, then you’ll be looking for another job pretty fucking quick because your ass is going to be grass.” he smiled into the darkness, thinking the kid’s ass was already full of grass.

  But Antoine realised it wasn’t surprising that Dan had missed some of the garbage back here since the light in the rear lot was dim even when it wasn’t foggy, making things pretty easy to overlook in the semi-dark. This was one of the reasons why he’d been on Chance’s ass to get those damned security lights fixed out here over the last few months.

  Strangely, the kid’s car was still here, parked next to the bin. It looked like he'd recently touched up some of the rust with some new sort primer, but he’d splashed it all over the side in a very haphazard manner. Sloppy at work and sloppy outside of work was the kid’s credo, apparently. Antoine shook his head. But if the kid had screwed off already, why did he leave his car? Then it dawned on him. He probably had a stoner friend of his pick him up because the rust bucket car of his next to the bin wouldn’t start, again.

  “Didn’t even have the decency to quit to my face, the little prick!” DePascal huffed, kneeling down. With a sigh, he tentatively picked up a couple of scraps that the kid had left behind, flicking them up over his head and into the dumpster.

  He paused a moment, bathed in the dim, yellow light and bent over further to get a closer look at one of the more significant bits of gristle and bone stuck to the frozen ground. It didn’t look like anything that Chef Murray would have bought and trimmed, or even thrown in the garbage for that matter. As the kitchen manager, Antoine knew the chef would never approve such unappealing cuts of meat. Usually, they carried only prime cuts at the casino kitchen -- meat with manly names like Angus or Kobe, nothing at all like this stringy crap on the ground.

  “Where the hell did all of this crap come from? And the stench! It was everywhere. It didn’t seem possible the meat could have turned so quickly. Is that goddamned kid dumping his shit from home out here? Seems like the kind of stunt the little fartwad would pull,” he muttered. He picked up a few more pieces and felt his back muscles begin to cramp. He was going to have to call it quits for now.

  “Well that’s it, he’s goddamn well fire…” He stopped, and froze, looking more closely at what was stuck to the ground in front of him. It came easily from the ice after a brief tug, and he held it up in front of his face. Turning it over in his hands, he examined it: a long stringy looking chunk that appeared for all the world like…

  DePascale dropped the scrap to the frozen parking lot with a gasp of disgust. He backed up, tripping over feet that suddenly seemed far too large and ungainly and he landed on his ample buttocks. He slid backward on the ice, staring in revulsion at the thing he’d touched, but unable to look away. Once he was a ways back from the scrap, he stayed sitting on his ass, unable to move, shuddering. Antoine took in deep breaths of ice-cold fog, feeling like he was going to hurl.

  On the ground near the dumpster, was not a piece of gristle or meat from the kitchen at all, but a long thread of tendon, the tip sporting the index, forefinger and thumb of a human hand.

  “Jesus Christ!” DePascal said, scuttling back farther into the fog.

  A low noise behind him vibrated through his outstretched arms, making them tingle where they touched the frozen ground. It was a low bass rumble like Antoine would have felt coming from the subwoofer at home when he watched a movie on his big screen.

  He turned and froze. The fog now had teeth and claws. His eyes widened, and he tried to scuttle away from the abomination towering over him. A ponderous weight came down on top of him, stopping his movement and forcing him into the ice. He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords had been crushed along with most of the vertebrae in his neck. He had been paralysed and rendered mute within a space of fewer than two seconds.

  Random thoughts shot through his brain as it shut down from the sensory overload. His skull’s plates cracked, splintered and ground against one another, collapsing from crushing external pressure. The pain came in white-hot waves that flooded away all conscious thought, leaving him to drown in a sea of misery.

  Several minutes later, the sodium vapour light flickered back to full brightness, and the fog thinned momentarily. An empty trash bag blew across the ground, scuttling along on a current of air. It moved over top a large pool of crimson next to the bin, and stuck when it made contact. The edge of the bag fluttered down, covering most of a silver vaporiser lying next to the puddle, leaving only a small picture of the CN Tower exposed on one corner. Two words were engraved on its side: Forever Higher.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Swirling the scotch in his glass for a moment, Mayor Bob Nichols downed the remainder with a satisfied gulp. He primly placed the heavy lead crystal tumbler back on a circular cork coaster atop his gleaming oak desk. Satisfied it was centred on the coaster he turned his attention to the other side of the desk, adjusting the green glass shade of an antique banker’s lamp. The rich umber-coloured wooden panelling on the walls of the office absorbed most of the light the small lamp cast. His aged, high-backed office chair creaked in protest as he settled back into its well-w
orn leather and cleared his throat. “All right, Reggie, carry on with your story.”

  Chief of Police Reggie VanDusen watched the mayor’s fastidiousness, noting with amusement that the mayor hadn't offered him any form of libation like he usually did. Of course, after the bad news he’d given the mayor the last time regarding his pay increase, and how poorly the mayor had taken it, it wasn’t surprising. Yes, that news was definitely cutting into his fringe benefits. Apparently, the first thing off the list was free booze. Yeah, he was going to miss that. Not that he wanted any liquor at the moment anyway. God no, it was only 9:30 in the morning! The man sitting across from him was as much of a lush as his partner, Ray Chance, Reggie reflected with contempt.

  VanDusen squinted into the bright light before him. He was having a hard time seeing the mayor across the desk and blinked several times. When the mayor had adjusted the angle of the lamp, Reggie was pretty sure that ‘His Honour’ had angled the edge of the lampshade up in just the right way, on purpose. That way, it blinded the person sitting across from him, effectively giving them the third degree as they conversed. It was typical of Nichols, Reggie thought, as the man always wanted to have an advantage over anyone else in the room. He had to give it to the mayor; the man loved his power almost as much as he did.

  When VanDusen failed to respond to his prompt right away, the mayor noted the slight smile on the Chief’s face and added with annoyance, “And what the hell do you have to smile about, Reggie?”

  VanDusen blinked once more and said, “Just thinking of lollipops and rainbows, of course, Mr. Mayor. So anyway, as I was saying, Constable Olsen was in having a drink after work at Frostbite Fred’s last night, and in staggers Willy Wilson Junior.”

  “You mean one of the two people that you promised me were officially missing and supposedly taken care of?”

  “Yeah, that's them. Anyway, it seems that half of the problem has been ‘taken care of’, at least.”

  “Meaning, what?”

  “I’m gettin’ to that. So in staggers Junior, frostbitten and rough looking. Must have been wandering in the bush for a while cause it has to be at least fifteen klicks from the cavern down to the pub.”

  “And?”

  “Olsen says the kid started talking a-mile-a-minute about monsters and stuff. Just freaking out about an animal attack, and how his dad, Willy Sr., is now dead from this thing. Kept going on and on about teeth and claws and blood — Olsen said he just couldn’t stop talking about the blood. At any rate, that was starting to freak the customers out as you can imagine. It’s at that point that Olsen decided to lock him away in the manager’s office for his own good, and ours as well.”

  “He made no mention of the gold while he was babbling?”

  “Nope, he never got that far, just talking about this animal that attacked them before he got carted off to the manager’s office by Olsen. All the barflies thought he was strung out on drugs.”

  “That is good news.” The mayor smiled.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. So anyway, since Olsen wasn’t officially on duty, he quickly phones me and tells me I’d better get my ass up there to do some damage control before the kid spills the beans about our little mining operation at the cavern.” VanDusen hefted his bulk into a more comfortable position, despite groans of protest from the antique wooden chair.

  “And?”

  “As I said before, I got there about ten minutes later and found the kid still sequestered in the manager's office, ranting and raving to himself.”

  “Nobody had talked to him?”

  “Nope, but I’d just started interrogating him and was finding out a few interesting tidbits when I discovered that some goody-two-shoes in the pub had called EMS. So in waltz the paramedics and they start to treat the kid's frostbite with some heat packs, which is fine. But then, to treat what they’re calling his delirium, they dose him up with that damned ketamine cocktail they like to use, effectively shutting down the interrogation.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “In a private room at the hospital recovering. I greased a few palms and told them to keep him sedated until further notice, so you don’t have to worry about him for now. Plus, I could probably arrange an overdose of insulin if you want as I’m sure that no one at the coroner's office would be the wiser.”

  “That probably would be the wisest course of action. Rather convenient that I’m the coroner as well as the mayor, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that does work out well. At any rate, the Wilson kid is heavily sedated, and I’m paying handsomely to keep him that way. It’s not cheap keeping somebody comatose at the hospital just so you know. That’s another reason I’m upping my cut, Mr. Mayor. Expenses keep going up!”

  “Learn to budget better with your cut, then!” Nichols snapped back.

  VanDusen ignored the mayor’s outburst, saying, “I don’t see why I should be forking over some of my shares to protect the security of the gold in general since you and Chance are getting the lion’s share of it. That just doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?

  “We’ll talk about what’s fair and what isn’t at a later date.”

  “I’ll hold you to your word, Mr. Mayor. Anyway, just before the paramedics got there and doped the kid up, I read him the riot act and told him that if he said anything about the mine or the cave to anybody, it would be the last time he said anything to anyone. I told him I’d be dropping him down one of those holes in the floor of that cavern. That shut him up pretty quick. A good threat is all it takes to calm a person down, sometimes. Although come to think of it, in the kid’s case, I think I’ll carry through on it. Scratch that insulin overdose, that kid is goddamned annoying! It would be a treat to hear him screaming for a few minutes on the way down one of those bottomless pits at the cavern.” VanDusen’s smile returned brighter than ever. He really liked this new thought he’d had of taking the kid for a little road trip back up to the mine when he was able to travel once again.

  “Reggie, what are you grinning about now? Let’s focus for a moment here! Whatever you want to do with the Wilson kid is fine. Now, what other ‘interesting things’ did he have to say?”

  “Well, as I was telling you until you interrupted me. Anyway, according to Willy, there’s something else up there at the cavern along with the gold. It’s sort of a two-for-one deal.”

  “Really? What else is up there? Is it valuable? Spill it; I haven’t got all day!” Nichols shifted impatiently in his chair.

  “Depends on what kind of value you put on something with lots of teeth and a big appetite. The kid said something ate his dad, and almost got him, too.”

  “Do you think it could have been that same thing that Chance hit with his Rover?”

  VanDusen sighed, still trying to get comfortable. “Don’t know, could be.”

  “If that’s the case, there’s nothing to worry about! It’s dead! Now we can get things back on track.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was hoping.”

  “Wasn’t there an attack up on the ridge near the mine the other day as well? Do you think it’s related?”

  “Yeah, we had an incident in the area a couple of days ago. But we don’t know that it was the same animal — it’s a big forest. We’re still waiting for the lab results. That new provincial conservation bitch pulled a print from the ground there and is convinced it was a bear attack by some unknown predator. ”

  “And you said Austin Murphy and his sidekick, Williams were there as well — along with this conservation officer, what did you say his name was again?”

  “HER name is Moon! The bitch’s name is Christine Moon.”

  “A female conservation officer?

  With a barely concealed sigh of contempt, VanDusen said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You met her down in the lobby here at City Hall last week. I was there with you, don’t you remember?”

  “That sounds vaguely familiar. I thought she was just a new secretary that Carl had hired, and didn’t
pay particular attention to what she was saying. But I do remember her being very easy on the eyes, however.”

  “Uh-huh, tell me about it, but she’s still a bitch. Anyway, yes, she was there including Murphy and Williams who’d discovered the campsite the day before. And that’s when they rescued the survivor. They’re the ones that brought that conservation bitch up there with them!”

  “Is the survivor from the camp talking yet?”

  “Nope, he’s lapsed into a coma for now, though this one is not medically induced like the kid’s, yet. But I might add that he is also conveniently located right next door to the Wilson kid.” Reggie smiled at the thought of having both his birds in the same bush and his hand in the pot of gold.

  “How convenient. And how far away was the attack from the cavern? Is it close enough that they might find our little operation if they start looking about for this beast?”

  “Well, it must be about at least ten or fifteen kilometres away, as the crow flies. Hard to say.” VanDusen stood up, his chair groaning with relief. “Well, I can’t say that this hasn’t been fun, Mr. Mayor, cause it hasn’t, but there is one other thing...”