Chasing Sunrise

Twenty-Six

I wasn't sure which was more disturbing, being able to get myself out of school or being able to rent a mini backhoe. A person could do a lot of damage with a backhoe.

Focusing on this list of choices allowed me not to think about the truly disturbing part of this morning, attempting to kill Evan. Yes, he'd admitted last night that he'd killed people, and yes, I knew he'd keep doing it. That didn't make this easy. So I focused on how disturbing it was that I could rent a backhoe, that could be used to kill all kinds of things if one were unscrupulous.

That said, I wasn't sure I was old enough to rent it myself. Corban handled that and I had no idea what age was printed on his driver's license.

All I knew was that half an hour later we were towing a mini backhoe on a trailer behind his RAV4. "This," he said, "is why I got one with a V6 engine."

"Yeah," I said. "I'll pretend to know what you're talking about."

As usual, he laughed like I'd made some witty joke. The trailer bounced over the rough road as we hauled it out of town, across the gorge, and back into my aunt's subdivision.

"Wait," I said. "Are we going to have to rip up someone else's property to do this?" This too was diversion. Caring about the damage my ex's death might cause to landscaping.

"Mmm-hmm," he said. "But the property owner is out of town."

"How does that make it okay?"

"It means we can put off making up an excuse until after, once we see how much damage we do."

"Right..." I said.

I felt useless as we pulled over at one of the countless big lots in the subdivision and Corban unloaded the backhoe from the trailer. He drove it over to a flat boulder that I would never have realized had a hollow under it big enough for a person to hide in.

While Corban braced the backhoe and began to dig out the boulder, I tried not to be an utter basket case. I was literally watching a murder in progress. Evan was dead, I reminded myself, but the version of him I'd been involved with wasn't. Evan was a killer. The fact that he hadn't killed me didn't exonerate him.

With a metallic screech, Corban got the boulder levered up and pushed to the side, leaving an open hole underneath. There was no sign of Evan other than some shoe prints.

Corban jumped down from the backhoe and went to look, though I noticed he kept his distance. "Yeah," he said, "I thought that might be the case. He's too smart to stay where he could be trapped like that. There's a prairie dog town here."

I stared at him. "What?"

"You know what prairie dogs are?"

"Those little rodent things?" I hazarded. "Look like brown squirrels with no tails?" I'd seen them at the zoo before. "They live in towns?"

"Yeah, the big old maze of tunnels they make is called a town, so I'm guessing he popped into mist form and went into those tunnels." He pointed to a small hole at the back of the hollow under the boulder.

"Soooo... do you keep digging?"

He shook his head. "Mist form takes energy. He already spent a lot being in mist form by your window and hasn't eaten since then, so he won't be able to hold it for long now. It's only a matter of time before he pops back into his regular body."

"And then what?" I asked.

"Boom, probably. I'm not sure."

"Boom?"

Right then, the entire ground in front of us erupted. One moment I was standing on firm footing, and the next I was being hauled back by Corban, his hands gripping me under my arms. The air filled with dust, making my eyes and throat itch so bad that I couldn't stop coughing.

I screwed my eyes shut and let Corban guide me back towards the car.

My ribs began to ache as the coughing fit went on and on until finally I took a deep breath of clean air. My palms were spread flat against the hood of Corban's car, and even that was covered with a good layer of dust.

"Yeah," said Corban. "Boom. Dirt and prairie dogs everywhere."

"What? Prairie dogs?" I pivoted and could only make out the still-expanding cloud of dust.

Corban wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pointed so that I could sight down his arm to a little brown rodent lying asleep on the ground. "They were hibernating," he said.

I hid my eyes. "Are there babies?"

"What?"

"Are their babies born over the winter, during hibernation? Like bears?"

"Um... I don't see any babies. Here..." He let me go and got out his phone. "No. They give birth in the spring, not while hibernating."

I exhaled. "Okay. Did we kill any?"

"I dunno. They all look asleep. Well, that one's moving. They're groggy, that's for sure."

I hazarded another look and saw that a giant crater had opened up. Even the ground under the boulder had collapsed so that it had rolled down to the bottom. The mini backhoe had been thrown and lay on its side several yards away. Thank goodness Corban had been able to haul me out of the way of all that.

The scene was surreal, like a mini asteroid hit. Dirt was still caving in at the edges of the crater and there really were groggy prairie dogs everywhere, little brown rodents, hard to spot unless one knew what to look for, some of them scrabbling weakly. I wondered how many had been crushed under the collapsing dirt or that boulder.

I tried to think of something else. "Popping out of mist form packs a punch," I said. "How many tons of dirt do you think that is?"

"Nerd girl, why do you keep asking me stuff as if I would know? Being old isn't the same as being wise."

"Well," I retorted, "what do you think when you see something like this?"

"I think, 'Wow. I need to figure out how to explain this to the landowner.'"

There was that. "I already had that thought, though," I pointed out. "Before this."

Corban smirked at me.

Right then, Aunt Cassie came driving past. I'd been so distracted that I hadn't seen her car approaching on the flat road. Now, though, she was close enough to stop and roll down her window.

For a moment she just stared at the scene of destruction. Then she looked at me, then at Corban, then began to roll up her window.

"Hey!" I called out before she got it all the way closed.

She hesitated, then rolled it down.

"Can you call animal control or... whoever? Department of Wildlife?"

Next she'd ask what she was supposed to tell them, and I had no idea.

But that wasn't what she said. "Fine," was her reply. "I suggest you get gone in the next ten minutes."

I decided not to query why she had a specific time frame. For all I knew, she'd done weird stuff that she'd had to report to the same agency, and right then, her rule about not sharing more of our issues than strictly necessary seemed like a good one.

"Okay!" I called back.

She rolled up her window and drove off toward the main road.

I turned to ask Corban what we were going to do with the mini backhoe and found him deadlifting it back onto its treads.

Apparently angels had super strength too. I wondered if he could have hefted the boulder with his bare hands, though I realized that would have risked Evan grabbing him. Corban brushed off his hands, looked the vehicle over, then climbed into its driver's seat and started it up.

I stood by, feeling useless again as he loaded it back up on the trailer. At least I could help secure it. Then we both had to shake the dust out of our hair and clothes before getting into his car.