Mister

By Richard (Rick) Thomas and Robert Haldeman

About the Book
What would you do?
Frank Peterson is a respected, successful businessman, father, and grandfather in a small Texas town, until a small girl enters into his world in a dream. The girl is in danger and is asking, begging, pleading for his help. What would you do? The dreams continue nightly until Frank confronts a pedophile, drug dealer with ties to a Mexican drug cartel. What would you do? Suddenly Frank and his family and friends become targets of this madman. In a bitter fight Frank kills his nemesis. What would you do? He then finds himself in a greater struggle trying to save his own life and freedom in the Court of Law. What would you do? All for a child he has never met or known. Would you?

About the Author
Richard (Rick) Thomas was born in Eagle Lake, Texas. He currently resides in Key West, Florida. He enjoys reading in his free time. Hemingway of course is a favorite, along with F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Bible. His contemporary favorites are James Lee Burke, John Grisham, David Baldacci, and John Sanford.
Cover Art by Robert Haldeman. Robert lives and works in Mount Joy PA ... A torn paper artist that specializes in portraits and has done works for people all over the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886044478

Book preview

Chapter 1

I had never dreamed much, even as a child. If I did most of the images and impressions were long gone before the dawn. What I would remember would be a collection of snapshots; black and white without consistency or coherence. Dreams in real time reminded me of those elementary school projectors, with the big reels and the clickety noises, cast upon a white pull down screen. In my dreams the film would break often leaving the sequence in disorder. I would leave my few dreams on the pillow. My world was one of touch, seeing, and senses. I was raised in the Methodist Church and believed in God, but heaven and hell were destinations, and my lifelong attention had been on the journey. This would all soon change.

My name is Frank Peterson and I am in my fifty-ninth year. I still have a full head of hair (only silver now) and am decent shape with a reasonably sharp mind. I am the VP of sales for a tile company and spend half of my year on the road. We have offices in Austin, Houston, one on each coast and our home office in Belgium. I spend so much time on the road. I covet my down time.

My sanctuary is a twelve hundred acre farm ranch in Central Texas. The land was willed to me from my father as it was by his father before and by his father before. Being an only child I was given the responsibility to pass on the land to another generation. My father was a wildcatter, chasing oil and gas leases all over the south. We were wealthy one week and poor the next but he never leveraged or hedged anything against his land.

You ain’t nothing without land, boy, don’t you ever forget that. His voice boomed, like it started deep in a well.

It was a lesson learned early. When my children were through with college I decided to move back into and remodel the house I grew up in.

I had the interior gutted and put in hard wood floors, expanded the kitchen with all new stainless appliances, built a new fireplace and turned a bedroom into my office – study. The exterior red – brown brick was replaced with white limestone blocks of chunked odd sizes, a new metal roof, and a front porch portico with rock columns, new landscaping, and circular drive. In the back of the house I added flagstone deck with raised beds, rock walls, an open aired pergola laced with jasmine climbers, a fire pit, and an outdoor kitchen. The old clapboard barns and stables still stand with a seventy five foot rust laden windmill in the background, with sections of pastures fenced off with barb wire.

Dense stands of pines, oaks and pecans are clustered with thick underbrush that houses a variety of wildlife indigenous to the area. I still run about four hundred head of cattle and a few head of horses. I employ a variety of local people; hands to care for cattle and fence lines, a full time maid, landscaping service, a general handyman and part time vet. There are a number of tanks (ponds) stocked with fish for the cattle and wildlife, waiting for my fishing pole. The only entrance to the house by truck or car is a quarter of a mile of paved winding driveway. I add this so you can experience the serenity of the place.

I entertain clients a few times a year and the house is always open to my family. My ex-wife Stephanie and I divorced in our daughter Madison’s last year of college. We are still friends, but seldom see each other or talk. My work, (the main reason for the divorce) limits any thoughts of relationships other than the casual type. When I am at home I spend my time alone to re-charge my batteries and enjoy my many blessings. My life is pretty good and it is important you know this.

I had just gotten home from a trip overseas and had a few weeks off. It was mid-December and I looked forward to the holidays, seeing my kids and grandchildren in a week or so. To the north a mass of black clouds are bundled on the horizon. The temperature dropped, the wind began to blow, and the rain started marching in blinding sheets across the outlying fields. The house was quite except for my movements and the violent passing of the storm. I started a charcoal fire in the outdoor grill with a green leaf salad tossed in the refrigerator and had a bottle of Bordeaux breathing. The lights went out as the wind chimes dance helplessly. With candles lit throughout the house I decided to enjoy my dinner. I put in a Lester Johnson CD into my laptop and opened the French doors to the outside. The night was majestic and eerie in its softness and sudden stillness. The rains had washed clean the sins of the daily dust and trials. Tired, I went to bed early.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I must have awakened to the drip of silence and a sulfurous glow emanating from the living room. My first thought was a candle I had overlooked. I rose from bed and walked towards the light. As I entered the living room I realized the light was glowing from outside the French doors that led to the patio. There was no such light on the patio and the electricity was still out. Curious, I opened the doors with no fear. The flagstone was cold to my feet and I stopped just outside the door. A chair had been pulled back from the glass topped table, and in the chair sat a young girl in a gas light silhouette. She rose, and as she stepped forward her vague features took on more definition. She wore a sleeveless white cotton nightgown with pink stitching around the shoulders and the V-neck. The gown was soiled with dirt and grass stains. Her blonde hair was matted with dead leaves and humus, and small broken twigs. Her right temple was swollen and dried blood was caked around an abrasion. She took another step forward on bare feet and I saw the lacerations around the wrists and ankles.

Mister, you gotta help me, her plea was brittle in the night and coated with a southern twang.

She took another step forward, Mister, please, please help me.

I took a step forward to assist her and everything vanished.

I woke to dull light of a false dawn outside my bedroom doors. Sitting up I felt disoriented. The dream was still so vivid in my mind’s eye. Gingerly I rose and made my way to the outside doors and opened them. The patio was as I had left it the night before; all the chairs butted up against the metal band that held the opaque glass top. Dead leaves huddles in small masses in the nooks of the stones and the pastures held a glassy sheen. Confused and disturbed I went inside and the digital numbers on the coffee pot told me the electricity was back on. I made coffee. The vertigo I felt was back and my mind and body felt sluggish in a hard hangover way. It made no sense having only two glasses of wine the night before. The only clarity I could redeem was the dream.

The rest of my morning was full of the ordinary. After being on the road for weeks; I had dry cleaning to drop off, grocery shopping, paying bills and phone calls to make.

By nightfall the travel lag and busy day left me yawning early in the night. After a small dinner I crashed on the couch watching a movie. I had let go of the dream during the day and wrote if off to the bizarre. My exhaustion gave way to sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night I found myself in an almost barren room. The walls were a sun bleached cocoa; the flooring a stained thick carpet of caramel. A solitary un-sheathed light bulb with a pull chain of tarnished silver was the only fixture in the room and a lone window was covered with a dingy white sheet. Rays of sunlight filtered beyond the cheap window dressing, and in the middle of the small room was single metal framed bed braced against the wall. The torn box spring and mattress were covered with an old soiled threadbare Mexican blanket of blues, blacks, whites, and gray. Secured with plastic hand cuffs to the metal head and foot board was the young girl. Her head twisted from side–to-side, struggling. The dried blood had been wiped off her temple and dark purples and black colored the area with a hint of yellowing in the bruise. She heard footsteps and began fighting the restraints harder. Her gown was resting above the waist and her genitals were a dark magenta; swollen. Her cotton panties cast aside with spots of crimson and rust. Tears welled in her eyes.

When he entered the room his back was to me. He was lean with longish greasy hair that hung about the collar of a flannel shirt. He wore jeans and cowboy boots the color of chestnut with a matching belt.

I tried to maneuver in front of the man to see the man’s face, but with every move his back stayed to me. He sat on the edge of the bed. I struggled to break free of my own entanglements.

Megan, how are you honey? His voice was raspy with a smoker’s resonance. It’s not going to be much longer then you can go home.

His hand reached for her, his fingers long, boney with grease stains under and around his nails, touched her hair before moving down, under the nightgown. Megan turned her head in submission and her eyes locked on mine. After fondling her breasts beneath the gown, he moved his hand to down lower. She winced. With his left hand he placed a mason jar on the window sill with a pinkish liquid in it. He stood, undid his belt as his jeans fell to the flour. He crawled on top of her and began to buck his hips.

I bolted straight up on the leather sofa. The breath in my lungs felt like a trapped bubble in water fighting to rush to the surface. When the air finally burst from my lungs I couldn’t control the assault. Coughing and gagging, fighting for any air, I struggled. When I finally could, I staggered to the stand alone bar I had in the house. I poured two inches of bourbon into the glass tumbler and drank it in one gulp. The amber liquid burned in the back of my throat. I poured a second. I could not deny the dream and its’ reality. I could not explain it either. In the shrouded darkness, I searched for some meaning, but there was none and I felt more alone than I ever had before. I felt I had lost my last innocence.

The feeling was not unlike the night I had taken Cynthia Manner to my first school dance. Being sixteen, shy and cumbersome in puberty I didn’t engage with girls so easily. She, being a year older had asked me and I had agreed, terrified. She talked and I drove in silence to the schoolhouse that night. When we entered the gymnasium, she turned and gave me a quick peck on the cheek and said, Thanks. I watched as she went to a group at one of the tables with older students, and grabbed a boy by the hand and kissed him hard on the mouth. I turned and left, disgusted with my own gullibility and desires. My sudden elevation and dreams left scattered on the hardwood gym floor.

By dawn I was no closer to an answer or equity of conscience. Having volunteered for a trip to Vietnam (yes volunteered, again it goes back to heritage), I had seen atrocities in this lifetime I could never communicate. The innocent (women and children) laying on charred-scorched earth, their face tranquil in death, sprawled shamelessly in contorted positions unable to outrun or escape some misguided bomb, dropped by orders of faceless men. I had buried; the wailings of mothers’ and fathers’ pleading in a strange language (though emotions and fear are a language we can all understand), pleading for the lives of their sons’, daughters, village, and themselves because the catch of rice or stored NVA weapons had been found in their hamlet. I remember being hunkered in mud and jungle foliage, in the silence of rain, waiting in ambush as the coming soldiers walked unsuspectingly to a bullet in ambush. And I remember the palpable taste of my own fear in firefight, the fear etched upon both buddy and enemy, in the midst of chaos; their mouths mouthing with unspoken promises in prayer for survival, and the anguish of the injured, some serious and other non-life threatening in nature, forgetting protocol and honor hoping to survive with gasped breath. The horrors of war are just that; war. Being a soldier we heard rumors of rape, but the members I served with would never stoop to that indignity. The spoils of war never included children, yet in our society we had many such monsters walking among us.

The dream had no ulterior meaning. Some young child was in danger; some Mother and Father’s daughter was being abused in ways most of us would never dare imagine. The abyss is never far away. We close our eyes or walk with blinders in this life never being touch by the evil that surrounds us. The perverted mind only lays in wait for the innocent. How could this be a part of my life? What god had I so offended that would place me in my garden of Gethsemane?

The one constant in my life had been ownership. I have a compulsive nature, but have always accepted my consequences and rewards from this flaw. Taking responsibility is not everyone’s calling or honor; I could no more explain the two dreams to myself and yet I knew I had to act. I could not do nothing.

I made coffee and walked the damp brown dirt trail to the barn. The fresh smell of hay permeated like sweet flowers in a kitchen table vase. These were the scents of my life. The smell of rain before an afternoon shower or the morning after; the tangible odor left on the skin after picking ripe tomatoes, the fragrance of manure blended with the musk of painted wood, and the perfume of open country and the fetid decay of leaves on the floor of the clustered trees all around. I had always trusted my senses, and now was beginning to think I was losing my common sense. Doing nothing or acting like a complete fool was wrestling in my soul. I saddled my cinnamon colored gelding I called Bo for a morning ride to breathe some fresh air.

It was just before noon when the bronze cruiser pulled into the circle drive as I stood outside the front door. The air was crisp and the sky cloudless. When the deputy stepped from the patrol car, I guessed his height to be just above six feet; he had a barrel chest and arms like thick tree limbs that bulged against the starched long sleeve khaki shirt emblazoned with patches. He wore his hair cropped short to his scalp and a clipped mustache above his upper lip, and a pair of mirror aviator shades. He reached for the straw hat on the dash board then walked towards the door.

Mister Peterson, Deputy Noble. He extended his hand. His grip was iron like.

Won’t you come in. I held the door as he entered, his hat still in hand.

We walked to the dining room table, Bottled water or a soda Deputy?

If it’s not too much trouble water would be fine. Nice place you got here. His voice held that good old boy edge.

Thank you, appreciate your coming. I handed him the bottled of water. The odor of cheap after shave wafted in the room. His eyes held an intense quality. He pulled out a small note pad bound with metal rings at the top.

He listened politely as I spoke. His facial expressions never belied a hint to his thoughts as I wove this gross tapestry of nocturnal macabre. He wrote sparingly in his little book. At times I felt the flush of heat spread across my face embarrassed at my own foolish logic.

He thanked again for the water as we proceed back to the front door. I watched him as he neared the car and turned.

There’s not much I can do with this information Mister Peterson, you realize. As a favor I will check any reported missing children and recent Amber alerts. I will submit a report to the Sheriff myself. He put one leg on the running board of the cruiser. He placed his hat back on the dash. He began to enter the car and stopped.

Oh yeah, I’ll also put in a call to Dionne Warwick and she if she can give me some help on this. His mouth was twisted in as cruel smile, his voice thick with sarcasm. He tipped an imaginary hat. Have a good day sir.

He started the car and slowly drove around the drive leaving me standing in the doorway, laughing to himself. I felt an inordinate degree of injury in his parting words; like an autumn jack-o-lantern who had just received a lobotomy, only to realize his head was full of pulp and mush.

The sting of inequity felt raw as the day progressed. In my heart I felt I had done the responsible thing, yet the conference of ridicule on the deputy’s face, and the certain cackles accompanying the story around the squad room were ringing in my ears. My zest and taste for life had become cardboard. My enthusiasm and trust soiled in a way I could not embrace. Being the object of ridicule is never any person’s fancy, but I was big enough to accept this. Yet my mind would not release the horrors of the night before. Was I being called to from the grave or getting an invitation to my own?

I fired up the rusted, manila paint-chipped Ford ranch truck I kept for the helpers and oddities. I went to the storage shed at the back of the horse barn and grabbed an open faced reel and rod and tackle box. The four wheel drive still worked at three hundred thousand miles and we bounced across the pasture. The cool wind coming through the open glass was fresh and eased the stinging pain to my soul. The smell of cedar and pine wafted on the breeze as the serpentine belt squealed beneath the hood.

Standing near a lightning burned oak, I cast the fly upon the water’s surface. A big mouth bass burst through the murky water with violence slamming the artificial lure with might and began to pull against the drag of the reel. The rod was bent full, oddly enough in a hook shape as he struggled and I tried my best to retain the right amount of tension. He once again broke the surface, the olive and alabaster skin and scales twinkled in the late sunlight. The yellow and black fly shown partially from the gaping mouth as he continued the struggle, and fight against the monofilament line, until exhausted. I carefully lifted him from the shallow water by open jaws. I removed the hook and held him aloft again in the fading sunlight to the rainbow reflection off his—her full torso. She was pregnant with eggs and full with meat. I gently placed her back in the water’s edge, moving her about, to pass water across her gills and let go. She swam in a normal fashion until the dorsal fin disappeared beneath the brown surface. I couldn’t bring myself to take her home with me for my appetite. She was too precious for just my hunger.

I had parked the truck under the shed and was walking back towards the house when one of those rare moments happens in time and space. The steady shadows of dark were slinking across the landscape but the western sky was still very alive. In an instant; like a flower opening to the morning rays of the sun, a sunset bloomed. Streak of red gold, with fire orange hung closer to the horizon as dark hues of purples, blues and dark grays were mixed like paint in a can. The moment was breath taking. I stopped and said a silent prayer to God for the moment.

The smell of night jasmine invaded my senses as I walk on the flagstone decking and the world seemed right for the moment. I opened the patio doors just as the house phone began to ring. The caller ID read Madison, my daughter. Hello baby.

Daddy! she squealed in delight.

Madison had always been the quintessential daddy’s girl. She refused to call me anything but Daddy. Her nickname is Maddy, so she would forever repeat her mantra in her youth, Maddy loves Daddy, and it never changed, even though she is a grown woman of thirty one, with two children of her own. Being the only daughter, she and I had a special bond. She loves and respects her Mother as she calls her, but she views me as a cherished prize.

What-ca doing this evening? She feigned in dripping Texas drawl.

I will tell you here, she speaks perfect English and is a landscape architect. The exterior of this house was all of her ideas and it is beautiful, pristine and ethereal. She and her husband Tim live in Dallas, where she is an award winning designer and Tim flies cargo for UPS.

Just taking in a beautiful sunset, baby girl.

That is sooooo awesome! I was just calling to let you know the schedule for Christmas. Her normal intonation was back, all business, but still filled with childlike anticipation. Tim and the boys and me are coming down the week before Christmas on Saturday morning to spend time with you. Jay and Robbie (my two sons) are going to Mother’s before Christmas; I’m not sure exactly when, but then we are all swapping residence on the day after Christmas. This way I get to spend Christmas Eve with my Daddy.

I hate the fact my children have to spend a divided Christmas and Thanksgiving every year. They are intent on have family holidays’ even under different roofs. They go out of their way to ensure Stephanie and I get equal exposure and commitment. I hate this fact. Why do we place burdens on our children I often wonder? Yet they would have it no other way, so I don’t argue. Stephanie and her new husband Bob would no more make a trip to the country, as I would to their new semi-mansion in Sugar Land. Some things in life just don’t work.

That is wonderful, was all I could think or reply.

I will tell you Madison has an extreme intuition for anything beyond normal. I think she could chase earthquakes.

What’s wrong Daddy? Her voice suddenly became serious.

Nothing…nothing, at all Maddy. Again my reply was a weak, but I felt helpless at the moment.

Daddy you can’t fool me! Her tone became harsh. I will talk with Tim tonight and tell him I am coming down tomorrow! He and the boys can come this weekend.

Maddy—Maddy, calm down please sweetheart. Something is wrong; out of whack here but it isn’t anything I can’t handle. I don’t want you and Tim to come down separately. Gas, the chance of accident, it is nothing to be worried about! My voice too hard for the moment, I softened. Madison, I am fine honey, I am so looking forward to seeing you, Tim and the boys. By now you should trust me. Everything is wonderful and I can’t wait to see you, all of you.

Cautiously, she said, Daddy I love you.

I love you too baby, don’t fuss over me. I will see you in less than a week.

Okay, goodnight, she said and sniffled.

The dial tone was extremely grievous in the moment. I looked at the phone in my left hand and felt I had betrayed my world somehow. I had no need to question the emotion of Judas ever again. In my effort to protect, I had inadvertently compromised the love of my daughter in my own nightmare. In a moment’s notice I gave her reason to question my integrity and virtue. I hung my head in shame and silence.

I recalled a moment years ago. Our family lived in Houston, but visited the ranch often on weekends. One such weekend only Maddy and I had come. This was a delight for the both of us. I loved my children equally, but every parent if they have the guts to speak will tell you; one is more special. Maddy and I spent many weekends in each other’s company oblivious to the fact the rest of the family were in existence. One such night we were counting stars on the concrete porch, a vinyl card table and metal chairs, in the day were our comfort, surrounded by mystery and suspense when a lone train whistle sounded.

The nearby town had been granted a rail contract in the late 1870s; the town survived because of the steel rails that brought commerce and trade for the last hundred years and more. It is almost impossible to go to town and not get stopped at a railroad crossing. The long zebra arms and flashing lights are still the norm, even today. I often wondered about the people who live in the houses near these tracks, as train’s rumble thunders daily, I don’t believe I could handle the constant distraction.

That all changed in the late 1990’s when an illegal alien by the name of Angel Maturino Resendez, The Railroad Killer boarded these very tracks. He murdered three people in the surrounding counties and an intense FBI manhunt had taken place, yet he was always one step ahead of the feds. In all he murdered 9 people from Kentucky to Illinois to Texas; he simply hoped on a rail line, hopped off and found a weak victim. He killed then hopped back on another train running in either direction, and disappeared. He surrendered to an unwavering Texas Ranger by the name of Drew Carter, near Cuidad Juarez Mexico, just across the Rio Grande and the city of El Paso. He was executed in June of 2007. Still the folks around this county remember the terror associated with the running rails.

Still the trains run and it is a part of the town’s heritage. It is a convenient excuse for being late in the morning or lunch as cars are put into park idling, as box cars surf upon the air and steel. Long bull headed spikes jolted from their habitat, lay near the home it had known for almost a century; clustered in the shale and rock near an injured and bent creosote timber. The open top rail car filled with gravel or asphalt; painted with mushroom graffiti, of a slum artist interpretation and spray can color, speaking of a different world to a world that refuses to pay attention or umbrage. Vandals are the image and artist expression lost to unknowing and uncaring. A different religion practiced for the few, but lost to the mainstream. The trains run daily. The enormous engines huffing and puffing in gear to grade grind on toward the next town, and the sad caboose disappearing every run, never parting with a wave.

That night an engine whistle sounded. I noticed a change in degree at the table but thought little of it. I looked at my daughter and silent tears streaked her face. Maddy what’s wrong?

The tears turned to sobs and burst uncontrollable then, wretches and bigger sobs and gasps. Baby, what is it?

She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Her crying lessened. Between whispers and choked starts and coughs, she replied: The train…the train at night, the heavy wheels and screech of metals clashing. Our nighttime phantom passing in our midst; reminding us how sudden the train passes in and out of our lives; life does the same. The night-watch-man-engineer pulls the cabled cord as the train enters and leaves our town every night. The call is absolutely alone. There is no one to respond. There is no call to pay heed for the companionship it must so desire. It is the saddest sound I know, the loneliest sound I can bear, a call of need and touch, never to be answered. It makes me cry Daddy.

I remember the profound affect her words had upon me that night, as I held her in my arms and slowly rocked the sadness to sleep in her.

I walked out onto the patio, the night stars twinkling in full light as a late autumn moon the color of lemon crested in the east. I had to breathe to calm myself from my own perjury, and I stood in the silence, waiting, hoping for that lonesome whistle call. I felt we had more in common with each other than anything else I knew in this world. I had become a trespasser on my own land and my own heart.

Chapter 2

I went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer, then walked back out on the patio. I put a stack of split firewood in the fire pit and sprinkled it with lighter fluid. As the flames caught I moved an outdoor chaise lounge chair closer to the pit. The night air held a slight chill, and the expanse of the universe was right before my very eyes. My day had been one of determination then downfall, the hand of God’s grace and a painful plummet back to earth or further. I didn’t want to sleep tonight. I didn’t want to meet Megan. I didn’t want to have to try and explain to her why I was so woefully the wrong person for her to reach out to. I felt like a grown man standing at the edge of a swimming pool, never having learned to swim and to my horror a child’s calls out from the deep end. If you are any kind of a human being you bound into the water with only thought of saving a life. You reach out and grab one hand full of water after to the next, until you get close to the person. You slip an arm around a waist, holding their head high above the water, pushing them toward the edge of the pool and safety. They catapult from your arms and grasp the pool’s edge in an unscathed panic and turn to look for you; they extend a hand to you. It is then you realize you can’t swim and distance ahead is far too great, and in that moment your head slips beneath the surface.

I waded through the six pack and at some point pulled a wool blanket from the closet in the hallway. When the dream began I was on some moonscape of snow and forest and mountain edge. The cold was bitter and I was searching for a place to seek refuge for the night. At the forest’s edge I waded through shin deep drifts, steeping over dead falls, looking for the right place to build a blind to escape the wind, and prepare for the night and cold. The meadow was also deep in snow and looked like diamonds glistening in reflection to the shadowed moon; just a sliver shown and was a happy crescent. Beyond the meadow, a small mountain with a granite trunk offered little under growth and trees, the mountain held no possible shelter and the meadow was the same.

In the whisper of the wind I heard the sound of something sinister. I turned to see five sets of red demon eyes, and the low guttural snarls. A pack of wolves had caught my scent. The lead wolf was ash in color and the muscles bulged across his front quarters. Slowly four more demons emerged from the shadows. Pink tongues protruded beyond the sharp fangs, and all five had the lust of my scent. Usually a wolf would not attack a man unless injured, but these demons had no qualms about whether I could or couldn’t defend myself. Backing up I stumble across another deadfall and the demons lunged, to the opposite side of the downed tree. By now, thick secretions of rabid drool fell helplessly into the pristine snow. The growls became louder, like a chorus in ominous union. I reached near the tree and frozen earth, searching, my hand clutched a thick branch the size of a large club. The leader of the pack began a trek around the base of the fallen log. With only the club in hand, I stepped forward and took a healthy swing at the beast. He dodged the blow, and I reversed the swing, again missing him.

Come on you mother-fuckers, you want me, you want me! I was screaming above