Mad Cow

“
T
his is a bad idea
, dude.”

James squirmed in the extended cab pickup truck’s front seat, tapping his foot and sliding the heavy, black duffel bag on his thighs forward and back. He swallowed hard and looked at the driver, his best friend Frank. Frank remained impassive, eyes forward to watch the dirt road which was the only entrance to the large clearing. Around the space were heavy underbrush and tall trees, dark and foreboding, even under the light of the nearly full moon.

“Relax, we’re fine.”

“We’re not fine.” The weight of the bag on James’ lap seemed to force him into the seat. Fifty pounds. He knew exactly, because there’d been exactly ten five-pound bags of flour the pair had transferred to vacuum-sealed plastic that very afternoon. Fifty pounds, a bit over twenty-two kilograms, a quarter of a million dollars … if, that was, the bag had been full of something other than flour.

Which the men behind the headlights he saw coming up the dirt road toward the clearing now expected.

“We’ve done this before,” Frank said, straightening in his seat.

“Not this much and not with them,” James answered quickly.

Before it had always been much lower-level guys, guys James wasn’t entirely sure he and Frank couldn’t take on even if Frank’s hocus-pocus failed and the mark realized he’d been duped.

James frowned. There were three individual headlights coming, not two — they were expecting two guys on bikes, no more.

“It’s already going wrong,” he said, “there’s three of them.”

Frank shrugged. “It’ll still be fine — the spell’s strong enough for three.”

“Dude, you’ve read those books your grandfather left you, like, four times, and now you’re an expert?”

“I read them enough — I know what I’m doing.”

James wasn’t so sure, but the time to argue was now past, as the three men on motorcycles entered the clearing.

Two of them circled the edges of the clearing, peering off into the woods while the third circled the truck, finally parking in front of it about thirty feet away. He got off his bike and removed his helmet as the other two bikers joined him.

“Let’s go. Remember — stop a ways from them and toss the bag in the middle between us. We want them to open it.”

“I know.” James opened his door as Frank did, wishing he’d stayed home tonight.

The air outside was cool, but humid, the usual combination for a Washington State evening. Frogs and insects were already starting back with their conversations, assuming the rumble of the three bikes was what had stopped them to begin with. For all James knew, the three bikers used this clearing so often that the wildlife was used to them.

He stopped when Frank did and immediately slung the duffel underhand into the space between him and the bikers. It hit the ground with a heavy
thud
.

“We said two guys,” Frank called loudly.

The biker who’d circled the truck looked at his buddies and then at Frank. He spread his hands.

“Was that it?” He shook his head. “Man, I’m sorry. I thought you meant, like, I should
bring
two guys, not, like, there should only
be
two guys.”

He smiled and James repressed the sudden urge to shudder. Actually, he repressed the sudden urge to turn and bolt, possibly giving Frank a little shove so he’d be between James and the biker, and thus the easier target. There was something about the biker’s smile — it wasn’t friendly, it was predatory. As though he was showing you the teeth you’d soon be feeling.

“Well, okay, then, I guess,” Frank said. He sounded so calm that James wanted to grab him and shake him, screaming why couldn’t he see there was a problem here. Frank pointed at the duffel midway between the two groups. “Twenty-two kilos. You got the money?”

The biker’s smile disappeared, replaced by a smirk that was no more comforting to James. He jerked his head and the biker on his left pulled a bag from the back of his bike, opened it, and flashed the contents. Bound stacks of green paper, lots of them.

James’ reservations faded a bit. This would be their largest score yet — enough to keep them comfortable for a year or more, if they weren’t extravagant.

Twenty bucks’ worth of flour for a quarter million dollars?

He supposed that was worth a little risk. Besides, this wasn’t their first rodeo, after all. They’d done this before and he could predict exactly what happened next.

The lead biker walked over to the bag on the ground to check it. He, no one, would turn over that much money without checking the goods, and why should he ask James or Frank to open it when it was right there on the ground halfway to him?

Sure enough, the one with the money came over too. He needed to be closer to hand over the cash, after all. Besides, he’d want to see what they were getting too.

The third biker was a potential problem — it was why Frank always insisted on just two. Well, that and the fact that it was just the two of them, James and Frank, and letting yourself be outnumbered looked bad. If the third biker held back, he might not be in the right place for what came next.

James gave a little sigh of relief as the third one stepped forward too, though. Everyone wanted to see what they were getting, right?

The lead biker went to one knee next to the duffel and grasped the zipper.

James felt Frank tense beside him. He glanced over and found his friend’s eyes were narrowed and Frank licked his lips in anticipation. James felt it too. No more onesie-twosie deals for a few grand, maybe ten or twenty — this was the big score they’d been waiting for. It’d give them breathing room and financing to set up something even bigger — maybe a lifetime setup, if they could manage it.

The biker paused. He looked up, eyes narrow, and his nostrils flared. He smiled again and James shivered, his hand automatically going to the spot on his chest where the pendant Frank had given him rested against his chest.

Just open the damn bag!
James wanted to shout. He clenched the pendant through his shirt.

“You boys are cool, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Yeah, we’re cool.”

Without lowering his gaze, the biker opened the bag and reached inside.

There was a deep, loud
whumpf
and the world went white.

* * *

J
ames sneezed
and waved a hand in front of his face.

Everything was white, he couldn’t even see the hand he was waving. Certainly couldn’t see Frank or the bikers. All he could see were shadows in a fog of flour, lit by the brightness of the nearly full moon. That light and a soft, green glow from his chest. The light seeped between his fingers, making an eerie contrast with the white cloud of flour.

There was another sneeze and then a cough from beside him.

“Might have miscalculated how far the flour would spread,” Frank said.

“You
think?
”

Breathing to talk made him inhale more of the flour and James hacked a couple times before recovering.

“Breath slow,” Frank said. “At least we can be sure we got all three of them. The amulets’ll offset the spell on the flour, so we don’t have to worry. Now we just have to find the money and get out of here. When they wake up, they won’t remember a thing about this or us — not even why they were here.” He laughed, then sneezed again. “Damn it! Anyway, the spell will erase every bit of memory they have regarding us — faces, voices, names, the whole bit. They’ll just know they woke up covered in flour in the middle of the woods … and a lot poorer.”

James fought the urge to laugh.

“Yeah,” he said, “if we can find the money in all this.”

“Just shuffle your feet straight ahead and we should find it — it’ll be right next to our bag — just try not to step on these guys. I don’t want to really hurt them.”

“Yeah.”

James started moving, shuffling his feet from the start, even though he was several feet from where the bikers must have fallen. He held his hands out in front of him even though there’d be no one standing for him to run into. It just made him feel better for some reason.

There was a snort and then a sharp
crack
from within the cloud of flour.

“What was that?”

“Probably nothing,” Frank said. “Find the money.”

“‘Probably?’”

“Maybe you stepped on a twig or something.”

“I didn’t step on anything, did you?”

“No, but —”

More
cracks
sounded, along with wet, tearing sounds, like a steak being ripped apart and dull
twocks
like you get when pulling a drumstick off a chicken.

“What the actual hell?”

“Frank, I don’t like this. This ain’t right.”

James was starting to get scared — before he’d been worried, tense, nervous, but now he was scared. The hand still clutching the glowing amulet beneath his shirt was shaking. His legs felt weak and he had a sudden, intense desire to use the bathroom — not just pee, either, it felt like his bowels had turned to water and he desperately needed to squat somewhere.

“Man,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “What’s going on … Frank, let’s just get the hell out of here.”

“I’m not leaving the money. You know how hard it was to find these guys and set this up — you want to go through all that again?”

“I just want to —”

James was interrupted by more
cracking
and
thwocking,
then there was more than just the white light of the moon and the green of their amulets shining through the fog of flour. Ahead of them a pair of red pinpricks glowed, then another, and then a third pair. All at about chest height and each spaced a few inches apart.

James froze. He felt a trickle in his pants — not sure just what he’d lost control of and really not caring at the moment.

“Oh —” Frank said.

James spun his gaze back and forth between the pinpricks of red, baleful light and where he thought Frank’s voice had come from.

“‘Oh’? What’s ‘oh’? What’d you do, Frank!?”

A low rumble sounded through the fog and James felt like someone had replaced his blood with ice water as the growl turned to a rumbling voice.

“Not cool, man. No, I don’t think you boys are cool at all.”

* * *

“
O
ops
.”

James turned toward the sound of Frank’s voice.

“‘Oops’? What do you mean, oops? Don’t say oops, dude!”

“
Run!
”

James’ first thought was that ‘oops’ was actually better than ‘run’. He’d much rather Frank said ‘oops’ again, rather than that terror and urgency filled ‘run’. His second thought was that Frank’s voice no longer came from beside him … it was behind him, rather closer to the truck than it had been before. Quite a bit closer to the truck, in fact. Much too-closer to the truck for James to even consider shoving Frank behind him as he ran, as he’d thought about doing before.

James ran.

“Get in the truck!
Get in the truck! Getinthetruck!
” Frank was yelling now.

James ran out of the cloud of flour and spotted the truck. Frank was already in it, swinging his door shut and fumbling for his keys. James made it to the passenger side and yanked on the handle, but the door refused to open.

“Open the door!
Open the door! Openthedoor!
” James yelled.

James saw that Frank had no intention of either listening or opening the door. The key went into the ignition, the truck rumbled to life, and James, determined that he was going to make it out of whatever this was alive so that he could beat the living hell out of his friend, flung himself into the truck’s bed.

“
Shifter shifter shifter
,” Frank was muttering under his breath.

James could hear him through the truck’s half-open rear window.

“It’s an automatic! Go!” James yelled, clutching at the front of the truck bed and wondering if he could fit through the rear window’s opening — it looked pretty small, but he was feeling pretty exposed in the truck bed.

“Not the truck, you moron!” The truck suddenly shook and swayed on its suspension. Frank pointed through the front window. “
Them!
”