CHAPTER 1: ESCAPE

The vehicles weren’t exactly blowing up – at least not yet, anyway – but it sure sounded like it.

When their airbag canisters burst in a shower of sparks and flames and smoke, the gathering crowd from the nearby taverns ducked and shouted and did the only thing they could, which was stay back.

A few of them, of course, took out their cell phones and recorded the scene and someone had been alert enough to call 911 and get the fire department on the move. The grasslands were dry here – the grasslands were always dry here – and while a couple of car fires might be fun to watch for a few minutes, eventually someone had to put the damn things out before the whole town went up. And if a little place like La Plata, New Mexico went up in flames, would anyone bother to rebuild it?

The rest of the world had mostly forgotten about it anyway, so if those fires spread to the gas station and to the little cluster of still-mostly-wooden buildings that made up the downtown, none of the locals figured FEMA or anyone else would be lining up with relief assistance. Instead they’d probably be offered some thoughts and prayers and ultimately told to move somewhere better.

La Plata, New Mexico wasn’t an ocean or a coastal town, it didn’t look quaint on any brochures and wasn’t a tourist hub that attracted visitors and their dollars. It was just a spot in the middle of mostly nowhere – a place where people were born, clustered and never left.

These burning vehicles were parked at a little automotive service shop in this town of about six-hundred mostly God-fearing Americans nestled at the junction of state roads 170 and 574.

Not a lot of things happened in La Plata, so explosions and a couple of burning vehicles was something that would be talked about for months.

When the rig from the La Plata Area Fire & Rescue Department arrived on-scene – to a mixed chorus of cheers, boos and jeers from the tavern’s patrons, all of whom they knew and a couple of whom had been in the taverns themselves before this call came in – and the water and foam began to fly, the sky filled with more thick smoke than anything else.

When the first patrol unit from the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department arrived on-scene, followed by a second SUV occupied by the sheriff herself, the scene became a bit more subdued.

When she stepped out of her Ford Explorer, the sheriff stood with her hands on her hips for the longest time, just as mesmerized by the scene as everyone else. As the smoldering ruins of the two vehicles hissed and settled, she turned and stepped closer to the group near the taverns, a ragtag collection of locals and regulars.

There were two taverns or dive bars in La Plata – Ted’s Pub and a place called the Sturdy Cactus. This place featured a tall Southwestern barrel cactus – several feet high – in a square area rimmed by old railroad ties and filled with stones. No one knew how long the cactus had been there, but when the current owner of the pub bought the place ten years ago, she’d learned that some of the patrons peed on the cactus when they left at closing time and that this had been a thing for quite some time. At that point, someone had said ‘man, that is one sturdy cactus’ and the new name was born.

“Did our friends make it out okay?” the Sheriff asked as she approached the group.

One of those locals, a hairy-armed giant with old-school pork chop sideburns named Marvin Parker – an ex-con with fists like cinder blocks – stepped closer to Sheriff Lolo Mufa, a full-blooded Zuni with a temper even darker than Marvin’s.

“I have good news and bad news, Sheriff,” Marvin said. “The good news is, mom and her little girl are fine and on their way. The bad news is, things won’t be as enjoyable now with them gone.” He gestured back over his shoulder at the Sturdy Cactus. ‘And they’re going to need a new bartender.”

But the sheriff, to whom smiles were painful and carefully guarded, nodded, “You never stood a chance with the mom, Marvin.”

“A man has to have a dream, Sheriff,” he said. Then he nodded towards the now-smoldering vehicles: “And you know what’s coming.”

In the distance, off to the southeast somewhere out over the open desert land and roaring closer and closer, they could each hear the thunder of helicopters – at least two of them – no doubt using the state road as their guide into town.

The sheriff turned her attention off to the distance, as well, waiting for spotlights to appear there.

“We’ll get them in and out of town quickly,” she said. “They’re not going to find any willing assistance here.”

“You got that right,” Marvin Parker said, and then he turned back towards the others who stood along the sidewalk by the twin taverns that made up La Plata’s nightlife. “Okay kids, time to look unhappy and menacing!”

A few of the onlookers laughed, but the sheriff knew the people here, and she knew they would indeed play the part. The approaching helicopters represented something the sheriff and the townsfolk could agree upon: what those choppers represented meant they were not trusted and they weren’t wanted here.

There had always been a sort of uneasy peace between the authorities and the people of La Plata, but in this that sort of peace was forged. Sheriff Lolo Mufa knew the town had her back – and she felt a little bit of pride in that.

Now, none of this made any difference to the two wolves – mother and cub – who ran northwest from the town with the wind and small puffs of dust at their backs.

They ran at a dead sprint, mother in the lead with the cub right behind, around cacti, prairie grass and mounds of rock and packed dirt. There wasn’t anything of note beyond the town’s limits, just a few sections of fenced in property within which rested old vehicles, RV trailers and other piles of junk beneath which may or may not reveal a dead body or two.

Once they ran across a dry riverbed, they were able to slow down for just a moment – the mother slowing down for her cub to catch up to her – until they stood together on a tall, dry hill that allowed them to look down over the small town.

Flames danced, flashed and reflected in the eyes of the mother wolf and her cub, as they watched at a safe distance what they had escaped from – what they had left behind. Any attention back in La Plata, and there wasn’t much because the town consisted mostly of two taverns, a gas station and a handful of unoccupied buildings, was focused on the two burning vehicles.

In a minute, their eyes began to reflect the flashing lights of approaching emergency vehicles.

If sadness, disappointment or resignation could be detected in the eyes of wolves, anyone looking into these wolves’ eyes now would certainly detect those things. Despite its rundown state, its lonely streets and its often-stifling isolation, they had survived well in La Plata – and even made acquaintances that could be called friends. The nature of transiency, of course, meant that those things didn’t take for very long.

“Mama, look…”

The mother wolf had become a woman – a naked woman – and Darcy Kincaid turned her attention from the town to what her seven-year-old-daughter was pointing at: two attack style helicopters, dark and menacing as they slithered closer to the town with their powerful searchlights splaying along the rough terrain. They were following the main, winding two-lane state road in and out of town, but Darcy knew they would hesitate and survey the burning vehicles first to see if Darcy and Bella might be inside them.

At least one of them would probably land and get a better understanding of what had happened. This would buy her and Bella some time.

Not a lot of time, but some.

Silently, Darcy sighed and shook her head.

“When will this end…?” She whispered, albeit to herself.

Then she turned to her daughter, shimmering and slipping back into wolf form. With a single nod, she took off running again, a sleek and silent full sprint through another dry creek bed, leaving the flames and the shouts and the chaos of that little New Mexico desert town behind them.