The wind whips at my mane as I cling to the tree 300 feet above the forest floor—making the final adjustments to the first Hive-Cam; a surveillance camera subtly disguised as a bee hive. Eventually the forests of Vilas will be covered in them—transferring footage from all around the area to my lab so I can keep an eye on my territory.
But for now it’s just this one. I straighten up and lean back just a little to get a wider view of my creation and I have to admit—it looks pretty authentic. Like a real honest-to-God hive. Heck, Winnie the Pooh wouldn’t be able to tell the difference and the compact solar panels disguised as leaves above the actual camera unit will keep it powered and hidden.
Sometimes I even amaze myself with my ingenuity.
Then the sound of a very loud, very close horn blaring through the otherwise peaceful woods muffles the tooting of my own. BUUUUR, BUUUUR! I glance over my shoulder and through the dense foliage catch a glimpse of a camouflaged double-decker semi tearing over an old logging trail. “And I was hoping to just hang out all afternoon…” I say to no one in particular as I let myself fall backwards off the tree and plummet towards the forest floor. Young trees rise up from the ground, threatening to impale me and I shift my weight to avoid them—but I still wind up with oak leaves in my mane. The ground rushes up and four feet before impact I spread my arms and let the wind catch the flaps of my suit and I shoot through the undergrowth in a fast, straight trajectory towards the semi.
And then my cowl starts beeping which means someone’s trying to get a hold of me, and there’s only one person I know of who has this kind of bad timing. But I have a few moments to spare before the real fun begins so I answer the call with a tap against the ear on my cowl. “Oh hey honey, what’s up?” I ask my wife as pump my arms to clear a moss-covered boulder.
I can hear pots and pans clanging in the background. “Just getting dinner ready. Do you want peas or corn?”
I grimace at the thought of those pasty little green balls, “I think you know the answer to that.” I say. “
“Alright, well that’s all I needed to know, dinner will be ready at five o’clock.”
Here comes the part where she tells me I’m sleeping on the couch, “…actually, do you think we could push it to about five thirty?”
There’s a long pause, then “…why?”
I lay it on thick, we haven’t been married long so these types of shenanigans haven’t grown stale just quite yet, “no reason—I just want to see you, that’s all…and I think I may need back up.”
“Dear…” She says in that annoyed tone she gets when she asks me to take out the garbage for the third time. “…I can’t just put dinner on warm and go flitting off into the woods. What am I supposed to do with Brock?”
“Bring him with!” I reply cheerfully, inching closer to the semi. “Our son needs to get a feel for the Sky Fox, anyway.”
There’s a certain kind of silence you tend to pick up on when your wife disapproves. And then I hear the beginnings of her reply, “Brock will join you in this suicidal crusade of your over my dead bod…”
Then I swoop up right alongside the truck, “oops—gotta go, hun! See you soon!” I tap the button and disconnect her. I hope I won’t need her but somehow a semi rampaging through hidden back roads doesn’t exactly scream “legal”.
I reach the passenger side window and tap on the glass as the truck rumbles over a rough patch in the old logging road that’s riddled with large rocks and pot holes. The passenger’s face turns a ghostly shade of white and his eyes flare—not exactly the reaction of a law-abiding citizen. “So whatcha haulin?” I shout to them, loud enough so they can hear me over the roar of the engine.
The gruff voice is muffled by the glass and the wind between us but the reply is clear, “dead meat…” It’s also punctuated with the sound of a shotgun cocking.
Suddenly the passenger ducks as the driver takes aim with the scattergun and fires.
A hailstorm of pellets and shattered glass sprays against my suit and suddenly I’m loosing altitude as I fall back towards the trailer. I grab a hold of the camouflaged netting that covers the trailer and slam against its side as the truck speeds up, the path becoming so narrow that I have to suck in and press myself as close as I can to the trailer or get clipped by a tree. I feel a draft and look underneath my arms and see what the problem is—the pellets from the shotgun have shredded the air-catching flaps of my suit. I won’t be flying anywhere for awhile.
Then an unexpected sound jolts me out of my head. It’s familiar—like a seal blowing its nose on a bumpy road. I flip over and find small rectangular slats line the trailer beneath the netting and I peer hard into one of them and gasp at my discovery.
Inside the double-decker compartment are horses.
Frightened horses.
Exhausted horses.
Neglected horses.
Some of them are have white tape or ribbon around their ankles like racing horses, while others just look like they’ve been worked hard and are noticeably malnourished with their ribs and spine showing and suddenly I realize what this semi is—I’ve heard of it before. I just had always hoped I’ve never find that it was happening in my territory—but I should’ve been watching for it.
The beautiful animals inside glisten with sweat, many of them have suffered injuries to their legs from being jostled around and their tongues all hang slack and dry outside their mouths—they’re obviously dehydrated. And with a flip of the Jargon and a few simple neighs I’m brought into the tragedy of their lives from the beginning.
They were race horses once upon a time, the majority of them. Royale With Speed, a pure white thoroughbred, is actually the grandson of Secretariat and had recently lost six races in a row—that’s when his owner decided to sell him to the meat plant in Quebec—so is the case with many of the others who are crammed, cramped and chained into the transport. The others are old farm animals who instead of being rewarded with a lush, green pasture for their years of back-breaking service to Old McDonald, were sold to a foreign market where they’ll end up as a hamburger.
I make Royale With Speed a promise that that won’t happen—not if I can stop the smugglers driving the rig. I turn back around and get slapped in the face with a birch branch. I try sucking in again but it’s not enough and the bark of a looming jack pine shaves off a patch of my suit and rips open a chunk of flesh. I creep along the web of netting like a spider until I reach the hitch in between the bobtail and trailer, the two sections surround me like a canyon. The sound is intense like I’m inside a rock tumbler and the vibration nearly knocks me to my butt. I’m just about to make my way around to the driver when the passenger smashes out the rear window of the cab with the butt of his scattergun and fires at me through the hole. I disarm him with a well-placed fox star and his gun clatters through the connections, the truck barely lurches as the weapon flattens beneath the tires. I dodged the blast but the coupling attaching the trailer to the tractor is obliterated. And suddenly the sound of metal rubbing against metal fills my ears as the trailer separates from the cab. Oh crap. I curse to myself as I realize what’s about to happen—the dirty drivers will get away while I’ll be thrown underneath the out of control trailer while the horses inside crash against each other and the aluminum walls of their pens.
In short: I’ve just killed every horse inside that transport.
I hit the dirt hard and skid into a tree, my head hits the coarse bark and my vision spins as my warm afternoon is swallowed up by the cold shadow of the haywire trailer barreling down on my helpless body.
To Be Continued...
To Be Continued...
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