Strange Highways

the skirling wind. "Sheriff's office. I brought the bloodhound you asked for."
     "Terrific."
     "What's happenin' here?"
     "In a minute," Ben said, returning his attention to the tunnel that went under the fence.
     "How do we know it was them that dug here?" asked George Yancy, another of Ben's men. "Could've been some other animal."
     "Bring that light closer," Ben said.
     Steve Harding shone the beam directly into the five-inch-diameter tunnel.
     Squinting, leaning closer, Ben saw what appeared to be snippets of white thread adhering to the moist earth just far enough inside the hole to be undisturbed by the wind. He took off his right glove, reached carefully into the mouth of the tunnel, and plucked up two of the threads. White hairs.

    8

TOMMY AND THE DOG STAYED IN THE STATION WAGON WHILE MEG GOT out with the shotgun - and with a flashlight from the glove compartment - to open the hood. The light revealed a mess of torn and tangled wires inside the engine compartment; all the lines from the spark plugs to the distributor cap were severed. Holes had been gnawed in the hoses; oil and coolants dripped onto the barn floor under the jeep.
     She was no longer just scared. She was flat-out terrified. Yet she had to conceal her fear to avoid panicking Tommy.
     She closed the hood, went around to the passenger's side, and opened the door. "I don't know what's wrong, but it's dead."
     "It was all right a while ago, when we came home."
     "Yes, well, but it's dead now. Come on, let's go."
     He allowed her to help him out of the car, and when they were face to face, he said, "The rats got to it, didn't they?"
     "Rats? The rats are in the house, yes, and they're ugly things, like I said, but-"
     Interrupting her before she could lie to him, the boy said, "You're trying not to show it, but you're afraid of them, really afraid, which must mean they're not just a little different from ordinary rats but a whole lot different, because you don't scare easy, not you. You were scared when Dad died, I know you were, but not for long, you took charge real quick, you made me feel safe, and if Dad's dying couldn't make you fall to pieces, then I guess pretty much nothing can. But these rats from Biolomech, whatever they are, they scare you more than anything ever has."
     She hugged him tight, loving him so hard that it almost hurt - though she did not let go of the shotgun.
     He said, "Mom, I saw the trap with the stick in it, and I saw the cereal in the sink all mixed up with the poison pellets, and I've been thinking. I guess one thing about these rats is ... they're awful smart, maybe because of something that was done to them at the lab, smarter than rats should ever be, and now they somehow zapped the jeep."'
     "They're not smart enough. Not smart enough for us, skipper."
     "What're we going to do?" he whispered.
     She also whispered, though she had seen no rats in the barn and was not sure that they had remained after disabling the station wagon. Even if they were nearby, watching, she was certain that they could not understand English. Surely there were limits to what the people at Biolomech had done to these creatures. But she whispered anyway, "We'll go back to the house-"
     "But maybe that's what they want us to do."
     "Maybe. But I've got to try to use the telephone.
     "They'll have thought of the phone," he said.
     "Maybe but probably not. I mean how smart can they be? "
     "Smart enough to think of the jeep."

    9

BEYOND THE FENCE WAS A MEADOW APPROXIMATELY A HUNDRED YARDS across, and at the end of the meadow were woods.
     The chance of finding the rats now was slim. The men fanned out across the field in teams of two and three, not sure what signs of their quarry could have survived the storm. Even in good weather, on a dry and sunny day, it would be virtually impossible to track animals as small as rats across open ground.
     Ben Parnell took four men directly to the far side of the meadow, where they began searching the perimeter of the forest with the aid of the bloodhound. The dog's name was Max. He was built low and broad, with huge ears and a comical face, but there was nothing funny about his approach to the case at hand: He was eager, serious. Max's handler, Deputy Joe Hockner, had given the dog a whiff of the