Thunder Road and Other Stories

3 | Talon

3 Talon

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We’d found the thing shortly after Jesse arrived at the camp (the one in Granger, a town full of dinosaur sculptures, go figure), back when we were still getting to know each other, still feeling each other out. Quint and I had already met and mostly hit it off—I’m still not sure why, he was from nearby Wapato (population 4,997) and I was from Los Angeles (I’d taken a Greyhound to spend the summer with my uncle, who had since vanished in the Flashback). We just had, same as we had with Jesse, who had arrived a short time after without so much as a knapsack—no family, no friends, nothing—and to whom we were introducing our favorite fishing spot (perfect and secluded and shady beneath the State Route 223 bridge, on the Yakima River) when the body washed up.

“Miles, what the hell is that? I mean, is that what I think it is?”

Quint sounded flabbergasted, incredulous. None of us had ever seen a dead body (aside from the disappearances, Granger had largely been spared). “Holy s**t, man.”

“Yeah—Jesus,” said Jesse.

We laid our poles on the rocks and shuffled closer—to where it was caught up in a reed-filled shallow.

“Where’s the top half of his head?”

I looked at the gaping, blue-gray mouth and plump, swollen tongue—like uncooked pork sausage—and the horseshoe mustache; above which, above a serrated edge caked in dried blood, everything was gone. “I don’t know,” I said. “But he died screaming.”

Quint was the first to point it out: “What’s that?”

He indicated a dull gray canister which was slung from around the thing’s neck (it didn’t seem proper to call it a ‘man’ anymore). “Look. It says something.”

I inched closer, stepping into the water up to my ankles. “‘Radiation Products Technology,’” I read. “It—it’s like a brand-name, or something.”

“Get it,” said Quint.

“I’m not touching that thing!”

“Get it—you’re right there. Don’t you think Hal’s going to want to look at it?” He was referring, of course, to Hal Keller, the brains behind Camp Courage’s makeshift electrical system—among other things.

“Well, then Hal can come and get it,” I said—and didn’t budge. “What part of ‘radiation’ don’t you understand?” I looked at the body: at the swollen tongue and horseshoe mustache—jet-black on blue— and the thing’s one visible hand, which was contorted in a crook.

“I’ll get it, you candy-ass,” cursed Quint, and stepped into the water.

Jesse, meanwhile, had begun to stir. “Ah, guys ...”

“‘Candy-ass?’ What are you, my grandpa?”

Quint reached for the canister. “Hey, if the shoe fits ...”

“Ah, guys. You need to like—not move. Okay? Like, at all.”

“Here,” said Quint. “At least keep him from floating away while I—”

“If you don’t shut up and hold still,” growled Jesse, “we are all going to die. All right? Just, look south, okay? Slowly.”

And we looked south: toward the bend in the dark, lazy river and the gray, rocky sandbars further down—and froze.

“Oh, s**t,” rasped Quint. “Just holy f*****g s**t. Is that—is that a ...?”

I waved him to silence as I studied the thing’s physical makeup: the brown body and distended belly, held horizontally over the ground, like a side of beef on a spit, and the balanced tail; the wrinkled, S-curved neck; the long snout and brow horns.

“It’s not good, whatever it is,” I whispered. “Everyone get in the water—it hasn’t seen us. Quietly.”

Quint demurred. “But what if—”

“Just do it. It’ll help mask our smell.”

And we did it, wading into the cold, (seemingly) slow-moving water, moving out deeper and deeper, something my mother had warned me against—because of the undercurrents—time and time again.

“What’s the hell’s it doing, anyway?” asked Jesse at last, shivering. “There’s no big game around here.”

I watched the therapod as it stared into the water. “It’s fishing, just like we were. Probably got one in its sights. Look, see how—”

And it raised its head ... then swung it around to face us.

“Oh, s**t,” whined Quint. “Oh s**t-oh s**t-oh s**t ...”

Nobody moved.

That’s when I heard it: a kind of whisper—a suggestion—not vocalized but in my mind; as though I were thinking it to myself, as though I were imagining it.

Release us, it seemed to say. Release us and we will protect you.

I looked around: first at Quint and then at Jesse, both of whom seem bewildered—until my eyes settled on the corpse and its awful, gaping mouth, its frozen scream—like something from The Thing—and finally on to the canister, which floated and bobbed, like a buoy.

Do it, Miles.

And then it was coming—the therapod, the allosaur, whatever—slowly but surely; padding toward us along the bank with its eyes focused on us like laser beams, like heat-seeking missiles. Like a great cat stalking its prey.

“What are you doing?” It was Jesse—sounding alarmed. “Quint—what is he doing?”

I reached the body and gripped the canister, worked its strap up and over the corpse’s partially-eaten half-head.

“Miles? What are you doing, man?” Quint, I think. “Because it’s a bad idea—whatever it is. Come on. Give it to me.”

“It’ll protect us,” I said—dreamily, dazedly. “It’ll make it so that it thinks we’re one of its own.” It had a pin in it with a ring attached, like a hand grenade— which I pulled; but with no luck. “More, it’ll let us know when there are others—other predators. We just have to release them ...”

“Jesus, stop him!”

But it was too late; I’d already twisted the ring and pulled the pin, which had opened the tube; opened it so that a weird, emerald light spilled forth even as I reached in with my fingers and felt an object—something smooth, cold, metallic, like a necklace—which I snatched up by its chain and quickly held aloft.

Something which burned like green fire as the predator entered the water but paused, snarling. Which reflected from its eyes like an emerald sun as it sniffed at the air and seemed to change its mind; as it c****d its great head—which was the size of a jet ski—in curiosity, before swinging it away like a wrecking ball and bounding from the river, back into the woods.

Something whose glow quickly faded as the threat diminished and became lifeless and inert in my hand; just a small chain with a medallion attached—which was black as coal; just a curved piece of an unknown metal (or glass) which was cold to the touch and looked like a velociraptor’s scythe-like, retractable toe-claw.

Or a talon.

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All of which brings us back to the present, and the fact that as Hodge drove away and I opened the Thermos a green light spilled out which painted our shirts; a light which told us—in no uncertain terms—that there was a predator (or predators) nearby. A predator—or predators—who might even then be preparing to rush us: from behind the overgrown ruins of the store, perhaps, or the Mesozoic rock formation in the street.

Or just from out of nowhere, I thought—as Hodge’s truck disappeared finally down the road—in a place that was in the middle of nowhere.

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