is Will Polson, and he has a search party on the trail of a rabid coyote. He said they’re less than three miles from town and the dogs are still tracking.”
“Oh no,” Lon muttered. The ramifications of this were huge. “I wonder how they even learned about the coyote.”
“That’s the rest of the story,” Avery said. “Duke had trail cams up after the rustling incident, and when he took them down earlier today, he had footage of a rabid coyote, so he called it in. Bad part is that the timeline on the footage was from yesterday so there was no way to tell where the animal is now. So they brought dogs and trackers, and they’ve been on the trail for more than an hour. They’re still tracking it on a route that runs parallel to the creek that goes through Blessings. Given the twenty-four hour lead the coyote has on them, they’re worried the animal might be holed up sick and dying somewhere in town or be still mobile.”
“This is not good news,” Lon said. He took off his hat and combed his fingers through his hair. “Call in the two officers who are on patrol, and then call everyone who’s off duty and tell them to come to the PD. We need to figure out how we’re going to deal with this.”
“Yes, sir,” Avery said, and reached for the phone while Lon went back to his office.
* * *
Cathy wanted to get out of the house for a bit. She didn’t really want to go for a drive, because she’d already done that, but she had a nice little gazebo out in the backyard that she’d never used, and she thought about checking it out.
So she put on a lightweight jacket before going outside, and once she got beneath the roof of the gazebo, she could tell by the looks of it that it had been here for years.
The floor of it was littered with dry leaves and a healthy layer of dust. The seating within it looked rough. It needed more than a dust cloth to get back in shape, but with some repairs to the inner circle of benches built into it, it would be an awesome place to sit. All in all, it looked sound, just in need of a cleanup and some paint.
Now that she had a project to consider, Cathy wanted to begin so she went back into the house to get a garbage bag and a broom. She was coming back out of the house with her hands full when she thought she heard someone scream.
She stopped—listening.
Then she heard it again—and this time the sounds of more than one person screaming—and froze. That wasn’t the sound of children playing, and it wasn’t a scream of anger between two people. That was terror, and they were screaming for help.
Her first instinct was to run to their aid, but with no way of knowing what she’d be running into, she went back into the house for her handgun, checked to make sure it was loaded, then put it into the inner pocket of her jacket and took off out of the house.
The screams were coming from behind her house, and without a fence around the yard, she darted straight up an alley and kept running. Now she could hear more people screaming and shouting, and they all sounded like women and children.
Her mind was racing, trying to imagine what could possibly be happening, as she came out of that alley, then darted across the street into the next alley, and then the next and then the next, until she came out facing the park.
That’s why she was hearing so many voices. Something was happening at the park. Something bad. She thought she could hear sirens now, but they were a distance away.
Cathy dashed across the street and into the park, and within seconds saw a half-dozen women running toward her. Some were carrying children, and others were holding their children’s hands as they ran. She still couldn’t see what they were running from, but the terror on their faces was enough to know whatever it was, it was bad.
As she began running toward them, one of the women began waving her away, screaming something she didn’t at first understand. But when Cathy got close enough, she realized what the woman was saying.
“Mad dog! Mad dog! Run!”
Cathy’s pulse kicked. Could this possibly be the coyote Duke and the rangers were searching for? She paused