Blood Lite II: Overbite by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2010-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

Dick and Larry

D. L. SNELL

“Looks like a guillotine,” Dick observed as he and Larry approached the trapdoor in the woods.

“It’s a trap,” Larry replied.

“What kind of trap?”

“Did you bring the containment unit?”

“It’s called a Nikon, Larry.” The camera hung around Dick’s neck. “This thing’s got more megapixels than your brain.”

“Did you bring the ectoplasmic injector?”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “The turkey baster is in your proton pack, Rick Moranis.” He rhymed the surname with a planet, the one with the o-ring. “Now, what kind of trap?”

Situated along the Collings Mountain Trail, the cell consisted of two-by-twelve planks and telephone poles, preserved in creosote but weathered and growing lichen nonetheless. The trapdoor, mounted on vertical tracks, hovered above the entrance.

Larry supposed Dick was right: the door did look like a guillotine. Although he didn’t know how big a guillotine was, exactly. Definitely bigger than a zillion.

Larry crouched and examined the ground. He walked on his haunches to spots of interest, sniffing fir scales and dirt.

Dick rolled his eye. “What are you doing, Larry?”

“Looking for droppings.” He tasted a stick.

“I don’t see any droppings.”

“Yeah, you’ve only got one eye.”

“And it sees just fine, thank you very much. If you can’t tell me what this place is, you’re walking out of here.”

Larry found something pearly on the ground and picked it up.

“It’s just a sequin,” Dick said.

Larry put it in a specimen baggy anyway.

He went to step into the cell, but the trapdoor cast a shadow over him; it was definitely bigger than a zillion—and he couldn’t even count that high.

He shuddered and sneaked under the door as quickly as possible.

In the cell, something had busted the floorboards. Something big. Larry’s nose detected only old wood and pee. Not the smells he’d expected.

Outside, Dick fingered his digital camera. “I can’t take pictures of this cage, Larry. I don’t think The Current Courier publishes juvenile carvings of pot leaves and the scatological pranks of apes. What’re you doing in there anyway?”

“Well,” Larry said, retrieving a Tupperware container from his proton pack, courtesy of JanSport. “I took out the bolt that the Forest Service used to deinstall the trapdoor back in the late, uh . . . Middle Ages. Now I’m just laying the bait.”

“Bait?” Dick asked as Larry opened the Tupperware and scooped up its invisible contents. “Looks like air.”

“You look like air,” Larry said as he hung the bait on a hook in the ceiling; the hook was cabled to a cotter pin in the trapdoor, so if something pulled the bait, the gate would drop and lock. Larry understood it perfectly.

“If it’s not air, then what is it?”

“Ghost turkey.”

Dick rolled his eye. “I should have written about Table Rock.”

“No, this’ll make you a journalist, bro—cross my heart.”

“That’s exactly what you said when we hunted down the infamous Bandage Man of Cannon Beach.”

“He was real, wasn’t he?”

“It was Halloween. You punched the kid in the neck.”

“Yeah, well . . . I went as Chuck Norris; what’d you expect?” Larry took out the ectoplasmic injector and basted the bait.

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