The Curse

Atlanta Journal Constitution Headline read Gwinnett Village mysteriously razed to the red Georgia clay as searchers desperately scour the wealthy Georgia enclave north of Atlanta for any survivors, or clues.

Many of the residents of Gwinnett Township commuted daily to Atlanta, clogging I75 at all the critical choke points, but on this morning, this Tuesday morning with it's Memorial Day hangover  was absent traffic coming from the dogwood lined streets, or phone calls or anything else. The Georgia Department of Law Enforcement had taken control of the investigation, but there was nothing more than an enormous empty field with not so much as a twig on it where once had been luxury homes, a Starbucks, the high school and all the accouterments of upscale suburban life. What the hell happened was what the public wanted to know.

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000168 

EndHTML:0000096530 StartFragment:0000000500 EndFragment:0000096513

The Curse Edit 1

A hush hot breeze rolled down from the wooded hills and across what had been a vast open meadow, mixing invisibly with the town's still night air like cream and coffee in an enamel cup. Fluffy, the Benson's huge Bernese mountain dog in her ludicrous wooly coat spins 360 in alternate directions like an electric generator.

 She has sensed something wrong on the wind. Then she does something she hasn’t done since she was a puppy and Mr. Benson accidentally stepped on her tail in the dark returning home from the airport. Then as now it was involuntary, but then Mr. Benson scooped her up in his arms and petted her  apologizing as he would to a human child, to his own child, Polly even feeding the fluffy white pup a whole can of dog caviar to make them both feel better. But tonight there was a far different reward in the warm woody winds for Fluffy.  Fluffy ran aggressively as she had never done before toward the fence nearest the wood at the back of the yard. But out there in the darkness she caught a whiff of something else in the air, something foul, something stale, something like death that made her turn and bolt back toward the safety of her doggy door, back to the human world where she belonged, not the nocturnal nature which closed in on her. She never made it. Less than ten feet from the safety that was within Fluffy heard another growling, neither painful nor pensive as hers, rather vicious and guttural. This came to her on a hot wind of foul breath. Something hit her in the hind quarters ripping a huge bloody gash through her pristine absurd, white, wooly coat. It turned her 180 degrees to face it's snarling fangs. Fluffy didn't even feel the pain in her hind quarters yet, when something huge and savage tore into her throat and ripped it out in chunks. In a second it devoured her and in another second it was gone without a trace, as though it had never been there. In the morning little nine years old Polly Benson would search in vain for Fluffy. When she would come across the blood soaked clumps of ridiculous white wooly fur strewn around the ground she would cry.

Polly Benson was sobbing, but Paige Tanner felt alive to be alive standing in her driveway removing the newspaper from it's humidity soaked plastic wrapper. She didn't even mind that the paper boy who was 12 years old and should have been able to throw it at least halfway up the driveway made her walk all the way to the street. Page Tanner was alive on this day, the day of her 38th birthday and it was a day she was sure she'd never see. Her mother got cancer at 33 and died four years later and her father dropped dead of a heart attack just three days shy of his 38 birthday. 

She remembered that like it was yesterday. She remembered that they fought that morning over her new boyfriend. She remembered that instead of kissing him on the cheek and saying I love you daddy as he left the house for work, she screamed I hate you at the top of her lungs and went into her room slamming the door. She remembered the sound of her father's car starting, it ’s peculiar sound, of an old Dodge. She still could feel the pangs of sadness whenever she heard anything like it cranking up. She remembered that instead of pulling out of the driveway the car oddly idled there. She remembered wondering what her father was doing. Was he going to come into a room and apologize, or was he going to grab her by the hair and drag her to school, what. Nothing, for a long time, for too long there was nothing. She remembered the odd sensation going on in the pit of her stomach as she approached her father's car along the narrow rock walkway from the doorstep to the driveway, the sensation as bewilderment transformed slowly but certainly as the hour hand on a clock to the certainty that something was terribly wrong. She found her father dead, with his head on the passenger side floor. She remembered, how she could ever forget, that the last words she spoke to her father were in anger. The accompanying guilty subconscious suggestions that the heart attack was her fault. Finally she could allow for the possibility that it was not her fault, her father could never not love her.

That had been 22 years ago on a cold February morning in northern New Jersey. But this was her life now. Here on a muggy May morning standing in pajamas in her own driveway complaining silently about the weak armed paper boy. As gloriously ordinary a morning as there would ever be. Inside Bruce was playing hooky from work. They would celebrate in bed and then he would maybe take her to lunch somewhere, somewhere nice. Then at 1:00 they would both drive together to the elementary school and gather up the most precious second grade school girl in the world. That was the thought she had as she straightened with the newspaper unrolling in her hands. Still marveling at the morning she took in a 180°. That's when she saw it, coming out of the woods down from the hills just beyond the cul-de-sac at the left. She sought a single coyote, so far away that it looked about the size of her little fingernail and moving swiftly toward the development. Everyone knew that the coyotes were coming into town and she thought people were making too much of it. Just keep your trash covered and take your pets in at night and you'll be okay. She preferred the coyotes in her yard to burglars anyway. At least the coyotes don't break in, at least the coyotes don't rob you or worse. That's what she thought as she turned to make her way up her driveway on this steamy morning to a cool house with a warm bed occupied by her loving husband.

But as Paige Tanner made her way back up the driveway to her front door she felt that old sense of dread washing over her once again. The old sense of something unexplainable and undeniable something changing from that which is unknown into that which was terrible. The sense of the unknown was that of being watched, when she turned again she was certain but not of how she was staring at the coyote that a moment ago had been the size of a fingernail. It stood on all fours in the middle of her driveway between the house and the mailbox and began to snarl. She stood in stark terror, hypnotized by lips curling up to reveal teeth the size of thumbs, ears folding down into flat tight triangles and fur raising and pointing out like a porcupine. Snarling and salivating in eyes red like reflection in headlights at night. Page slid her left foot back slowly, ever so slowly, so slowly she hoped that the beast wouldn’t notice. She moved her left foot only until toe lined up with her heel, then she shifted all her weight to that foot, but carefully as though she had a glass of water on her head and she didn't want to spill a drop. The coyote leaned toward her and she knew she had to stop telling herself this can't be happening. Then she realized she had left the front door slightly ajar, she never does that. Taking it as a sign from God she leaped backward without even turning. She landed hard on her back on the granite doorstep. He could have me she thought, but he didn't leap, he just picked up his front paw. Page kicked madly with her feet pushing herself across the threshold into her house. Then still on her back she slammed the front door with both feet. She rolled to her stomach reached up, locked the door then moved up finally to her feet to click the deadbolt. Stepping backwards away from the door, slowly as she did outside, she tried to utter her husband's name, but her trembling jaw only moved silently. She was safe, she told herself. At least that terror of this can't be happening was beginning to abate. The door was made of steel and if she put one of her eyes to the peep hole she would see the coyote was gone. She tried again in vain to call her husband. What happened next was as confusing as it was terrifying. Something hit the door. Something like a truck crashed into the front door with a terrible bang that knocked page Tanner on her back and sent her sliding inside past the base of the stairs. She could see her husband standing there in his gold Georgia Tech boxers and 45 in his hand. A second later the door came crashing down with a coyote stepping casually in on top of it. When Paige finally found her voice it was in a high loud and long scream that would have brought all the neighbors if any had been home. She watched in horror as Bruce Tanner emptied his clip into the coyote, with absolutely no effect. The demon snarling and salivating stared with its reflective red eyes.

 And as her husband came off the landing to scoop her up she heard the sound of every window in the house breaking in with hurricane force. The coyotes streamed in in a swarm. They swarmed around the house, up and down the walls and ceiling like cockroaches, great big snarling coyote roaches. They ripped Bruce away from her. They took him on his stomach feet first up the stairs. He tried to throw the pistol to her leaving him in a way that seemed to her vulnerable. She heard or thought she heard over the hurricane force roar of the savagely snarling beasts and say, "I love you.” Or did he say, "I'm sorry." The last thing that page Tanner saw on this morning of the 38th birthday was the limp body of her dead husband bounding savagely up the stairs carried by a stream of coyotes.

Later that day the most precious little second-grade girl in the world would wonder why her parents have not come to get her at school. She wasn't supposed to take the school bus that day. Both of her parents told them to wait there for them. Finally her second grade teacher Mrs. Freeman would take her home, home to make a grisly discovery. Then a second little girl in Gwinnett Township would weep on that day.

"Sherriff Tillman", Polly Benson's father, Ted accosted him as he stepped out of his white and green Gwinett County Sheriff SUV. The sheriff stopped because Ted Benson was a promising new state’s attorney and that made him his boss. He approached him in his dark blue suit over a white shirt and red tie that made Mat Tillman wonder how anyone could stand there in this heat without dripping. He supposed it had something to do with the fact that Benson didn't have either a pulse, or a southern accent, but wasn't exactly sure how the two were related. Benson was holding a scalding hot large coffee in his left hand and pointing as if the sheriff should look over his own left shoulder.

"They were in my yard last night. They chewed my daughter's dog down to bones and left her there," Benson said plaintively in a tone that rose just high enough to carry authority, but not loss of control. "In my yard," this time he pronounced it YARRRD. "Who was in your yard, Ted?” inquired Tillman" "The coyotes were in my yard, as if you don't know." It wasn't that Sheriff Tillman didn't know what Benson was talking about, it was just that he didn't care. Right now he was only concerned with covering up a murder Ted Benson and the coyotes be dammed. "Ok Ted ok I'll get animal control out there right away." "Not animal control, you Mat, I want you out there personally." "All right Ted, but right now I have a Mocha Frapuccino and your boss waiting for me inside. So, I gotta go." "Yea, I saw him in there, at his usual spot in the back," Benson granted, then left looking askance at him.

Tillman walked inside grateful for cold blast of arctic air conditioned air coming from the rafters. Everybody complained how they kept it so dam cold in here, but he thought it wasn't nearly cool enough. People told him that his big size made him hotter than smaller folks. Tillman figured they were at least partly right, he was big. At six feet three inches he was in the top 90 th percentile for males and there was only a little bit of fat around his waist, what he called lean weight, because he could use it to lean up against a guy if he had to. He had in fact leaned up against many men in college on the University of Georiga offensive line. Those days had gone, but he still pumped three times a week and ran the tread mill to boot. He balked at the line and walked directly to where Richard I. Toll was sitting.

"Hi Mat  he said without looking up in a high tone refined southern accent which contrasted with his own deep one." "We need to talk about something tis morning, don't we? Sheriff Tillman was keenly aware of Richard I tolls propensity not to look up at the people he was speaking to as if they weren't worthy of it, they weren't. "Yes we do Sir," Matt said in a voice that could never be a whisper no matter how hard he tried. "Do you want to do it right here?" He asked looking around nervously. "Sure why not, it won't take long." Richard I toll was the type of man who in all of his 62 years was accustomed to getting his privacy in the most public of places whenever he wanted to. He was the type of man never take a needless risk, but every so often take a bold calculated one. Ten years ago he and Sheriff Tillman had killed his brother and business partner Bruce in a decidedly non-cautious move. That bold move made him the sole owner of Gwinett Township which is Gwinett County and the areas states attorney to boot. Mat Tillman buried the body under an 11,000 square foot Mc mansion on the Western end of the county. That was at the height of the housing bubble. If nothing had changed then all would still be well. But now the bubble had burst and the banks had decided to destroy all the houses in foreclosure blighted west side.

The two men agreed that the demolitions would most likely consist of simply bulldozing the houses to the ground. But there was a small risk that they might actually dig up some of the properties. The risk was small but not worth taking and Richard I Toll the man who would risk discussing the cover-up of his brother at a booth in Starbucks wasn't going to take that one. So, he instructed Tillman to remove the body and destroy it once and for all. Sheriff Tillman agreed to do it that very night. "Right now though I've gotta go over to your deputy prosecutor's house." "Which one?" Richard I Toll asked, still looking at the papers he was shuffling. "Benson." "Benson, what did he do”? Toll asked still not bothering a glance at Tillman. "Nothing, nothing Tillman sighed, just the coyotes got into his yard and chewed up his dog." "Oh damn coyotes, I wish they would've chewed something else up about 10 years ago," Toll said dryly. "I guess, I guess Tillman said getting up to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow." "Tomorrow then Sheriff," Toll said still not looking up as he Sheriff walked out.

Well the city boy got that right at least, Sheriff Tillman thought, looking down at the animal tracks in Ted Benson's backyard. They were coyotes all right, but what was he supposed to do about it. It was still a job for animal control. That was what Sheriff Tillman was thinking when he was called to the Tanner residence.

Matt Tillman was a bad guy, he wasn't the worst of men but he was a bad one. He wasn't a professional killer as such, although he had performed the hit on Bruce Toll at the behest of his brother Richard I Toll. The Sheriff figured he never got paid directly for it so he was just a murderer not a paid assassin. But he was paid a lot and often by the surviving Toll brother and was given his cushy job as sheriff that he was totally unqualified for. But most of his work for Toll consisted of using his considerable lean weight on guys, guys who could not see things reasonably as could the honorable Richard I Toll. The Sheriff didn't go out of his way to kill Bruce Toll, but he didn't wince to do it either. when you worked for two brothers each of which paid you to kill the other, things sometimes just went that way. Sheriff Tillman was a bad man, he had seen and done a lot of bad things, but nothing that he knew could prepare him for what he was about to see when he walked into the Tanner residence.

Make the labor day weekend the entire timeline.

January 15

Unfortunately for the investigation he was first on the scene. Behaving like a novice rookie he walked right through the front door with no regard to preservation of evidence. But all of the evidence was covered by blood which was dripping from the walls and ceiling. It fell on his arms and large head in big splattering drops that felt like water balloons filled with disgusting sludge. And it smelled like blood and like shit too. Tillman shot back out the front door through which he had just come leaving big bloody footprints all the way to the grass. It was all he could do to not throw up. He sat in his SUV smearing rather than cleaning the blood from his massive body until deputy sheriff Barry Jensen and the lab geek, an Asian kid named Lin arrived. The Sheriff figured he wasn't needed inside. So, he just motioned them that way and watched them disappear into the bloody living room. The yellow crime scene tape went up, and the hours went on, the Sheriff sat in his air-conditioned SUV and did not move. Not until the blood was off his skin and he'd changed his shirt did he make his way back in.

“This don't figure Matt, this just don't figure.” Deputy Barry Jensen said from down on one knee in the living room floor. "I mean Sheriff,” he corrected himself and straightened up. Deputy Jensen was never supposed to address the Sheriff as Matt. Others could but not him. The two men hated each other. Jensen had been sheriff of Gwinnett County, until County owner and states attorney Richard I Toll threw his weight around and made Matt Tillman Sheriff. Tillman was no investigator, he was Richard I Toll’s personal enforcer. Jensen often said that Tillman could not investigate his way out of a wet paper bag and they both knew he was right. “It just don't figure." He continued. “It just don't figure. We got coyote tracks everywhere,” he continued pointing up the walls and across the ceiling. “I mean to say everywhere. Also there's so much of it, looks like gallons of it. But we only found remains of two bodies. Now there's only 7 pints of blood to a human body. So, where did all the rest of this blood come from? Near as I can figure the coyotes swarmed in on the house, the husband came down and got a shot off before they dragged him upstairs and ripped him to shreds at the top of the landing. The wife well they got her right here,” he said pointing directly down. “It's weird, but it's still no crime scene. Coyotes did this not people."

"Okay then,” was all that Tillman could say and his deep Georgia accent and left. It was well after midnight by the time Tillman left the scene and by then he was in no mood to go moving bodies. If that arrogant prick Richard I Toll wanted body of his dead brother moved, he thought, he can damn well do it himself. 

While Matt Tillman was not prone to long bouts of deep self reflection, he could come to some brittle calculations at critical times. He was only too aware that he couldn't investigate his way out of a wet paper bag.

 

He was no investigator, but he knew that deputy Barry Jensen was a superior one, one that he had steered far clear of the investigation of the deceased Toll brother, but he did not know is that just this moment Barry Jensen noticed a few things that puzzled him almost as much as coyote tracks on the ceiling and gallons of blood from only two bodies. The first was that Sheriff Tillman was visibly disturbed. Tillman thought that he hid it well, but he did not. He had never seen the Sheriff disturbed before, pissed as hell, ready to kill someone, always, but Jensen never imagined that the Sheriff would hold up in his cruiser for six hours at a bloody scene, crime or not.

Next was the fact that the Tillman had paid complete attention to him. No interruptions, no ridicule, no marking of his territory as was his usual. It was like he was laying low. It made Jensen want to follow Tillman all over again, but he knew that was way too risky, he knew that he could lose a lot more than just his job. It just wasn't worth it, not yet.

******************************************************************************************

It wasn't until the Memorial Day weekend that Sheriff Tillman finally hadn't gotten around to moving the body of Bruce Toll. Richard I Toll would be livid if he knew how tardy Tillman was. Tillman knew this which is why he was tardy, because fuck him.

 Richard I Toll had ice water in his veins, he could lie with a straight face and the whole world would believe him. “Naw Matt tis not even worth the trouble” That was just like

Toll, what the prick really meant was get this done yesterday. And Tillman figured for his own ass that the remaining Toll brother got that part right. After all it he who killed the other Toll brother, the dirty part at least, the part that left evidence, evidence that straight to himself. He alone was facing the electric chair. So, that Saturday night after the bars closed Sheriff Tillman drove out in his own truck, out to the foreclosure blighted Western outskirts of Gwinnett. He wasn't too worried that Richard would find out about this and if he squawked too loud, well he take care of him same way as his brother. Both brothers Toll were just too fucking arrogant for their own good he thought as he pulled his up the circle driveway of the never lived in the Mc mansion whose concrete foundation held the body of Bruce Toll. He carried his service 9 mm on his side, and reached for the pump shotgun on the passenger seat along with the baton flashlight from the glove box. No sooner had he put both feet on the ground did he rack shotgun for comfort. If any coyotes showed up he would blow a hole the size of daylight right through them. He cleared the house for squatters and finding none walked around to the utility box found the yellow seal and the flashlight beam that read do not break under penalty of law, and broke it. To prevent vandals from stealing copper wires, the city left electricity on even though virtually every house on the side of town was empty. The Sheriff only had to use the flashlight to get downstairs in the basement once there he screwed in a 60 W from the Sheriff's office supplies and he was set. Then he returned to the bed of his pickup to get the jackhammer. It was a cumbersome device, but Tillman moved it with sufficient ease, the lean weight helping him. It was weight it never even had to use to murder Bruce Toll. That had been easy he remembered as he set the jackhammer into the concrete at the approximate spot above the body. Bruce Toll absolutely presented himself, he punched him to death right here on this very spot, when it was still an empty field with nothing more than a dirt road and some surveyor stakes in the ground. Tillman was just a deputy then working for Sheriff who was Barry Jensen. But Tillman was moonlighting on that day. In fact he was collecting $50,000 from Bruce Toll the murder his own brother. He remembered like it was yesterday, slipping the envelope into his inside coat pocket and punching the dog shit out of Bruce in almost the same move. The first punch took him off his feet and put him on his back and took away a good portion of his left cheek bone along with it. Tillman could see it then, the questioning look on the remains of his face, the questioning look of how could I let my little brother get the best of me. The second punch, the one that killed him he never felt. It landed with the mushy thud into his right temple and Bruce Toll was done asking questions. Bruce was going to pay him $100,000 to kill Richard, but Richard came up with $200,000 for him to kill Bruce. Richard I Toll never knew how close he came to being killed by the man he paid to kill his own brother. Tillman figured it was better that way. Richard rigged things so that it looked like Bruce absconded with $200,000. There was an investigation an APB even a manhunt. Most people figure that Bruce Toll split town with $200,000 and was kicked back in the Bahamas maybe the Cayman Islands. But that wasn't the case at all, he'd been right here along. It took him about 45 min. to cut an 8 x 8 square, and then chop that into halves and then quarters. He wrestled one of the concrete blocks up out of its lattice let it drop with a clunk onto the concrete floor. That's the hardest piece he thought to himself it would be easier from here. Sweat was beating across his brow and soaking his shirt and jeans and he was thirsty. There were two coolers in the bed of his truck. One was for the body, the other was full of beers. He took the flashlight in his right hand went down to his left knee next to the jackhammer. Then as though he were picking up a sack of potatoes he hoisted the machine onto his left shoulder nearly bounded up the steps, through the living room, the foyer, then out the front door into the muggy Georgia night. His spirits were high as he fumbled for the latch with his right hand still holding the flashlight. But when the jackhammer hit the bed of his truck his mood became that of stark terror. In the doorway he stared into the red retinal reflections of two huge eyes, coyotes eyes. The shotgun, shit it's in the basement he thought. He transferred the flashlight to his left hand and pulled the 9 mm with his right, all the while keeping a steady beam of the flashlight illuminating the coyote’s face. That face covered with blood and matted fur. Then he heard a steady low growl that rumbled from the beast’s stomach as lips curled up revealing huge salivating canines. Now the beast was snarling and shaking stepping forward with ears narrowing and flattening down. As the beast leaned in Tillman fired twice right between the eyes. To his astonishment there was absolutely no effect. Losing all regard for the body Tillman dropped the flashlight and made for the cab of his truck. As the door slammed shut he felt a tremendous impact as though a truck slammed into the driver side door. As he landed on the floor of the passenger side he could hear the metal twisting and glass shattering and truck nearly tipping over. The gun, where was it. It didn't do him any good anyway. He was shaking the cobwebs when he felt something, something heavy land with a thud on the hood of the truck. He knew what it was. The keys, where are the keys. They are in the ignition, thank God. He climbed into the driver seat trying not to look at the beast snarling snapping at the cobwebbed windshield and prayed that it wouldn't break. Mercifully it cranked on the first try he slammed it into drive pealed out of the circular driveway and onto the street. Somehow the coyote had been shaken off. That's what Matt Tillman thought as he pushed his pickup to 80 miles an hour through would have been residential back streets in this foreclosure blighted wilderness. But now he saw something that made him feel sick. He saw in his mirrors through the pale moonlight all around him coyotes, thousands of them closing in as they would deer in the open field. In his side view he could see one closing in. How God dammit how can this be, I'm doing 75. Then one of the coyotes bit into the left front tire and the wheel froze up like a wounded paw. Instead of rolling over, the coyote brought his truck to a gentle stop. But there was nothing gentle about what happened next. When they found Matt Tillman two days after Labor Day, he was disemboweled and all but decapitated sitting in the driver seat with his throat completely ripped out, his head hanging back over the back of the seat, attached by a single flap of skin. In his hand they found his 9 mm. To the new ex Sheriff Barney Jensen it looked like he was trying to take his own life and just never got the chance. From the way things lined up it looked like coyotes all right. No crime, just coyotes. What Sheriff Jensen couldn't figure out in addition to what was making these coyotes attack, was what the hell Matt Tillman was doing way the hell out here.

Richard I Toll owned town and its newspaper so, he made sure that the paper buried story of the coyote attacks. What little was published was more in the form of a cover-up than a news story. More bad news is not what he needed to attract investors. So far the only other person still alive who had a clue as to how bad the coyote attacks were, was Barney Jensen, and he wasn't saying anything for fear of starting a panic. That made Barry Jensen an uncomfortable ally of Richard I Toll’s. Jensen long new that the Toll Brothers were criminals, corrupt from the core. It was like his police officer father used to say, "Some men commit crimes other men are just criminals." The Toll Brothers were just criminals, but even Jensen had no idea just how bad they were. Right now Jensen was walking a tight rope between keeping quiet to prevent a panic, going public about the dangers might be the greater threat. Richard I Toll had no struggles, he was perfectly happy to keep things covered up. But after that Memorial Day the coyotes made sure everyone saw them. The ex-new Sheriff Dave Jensen saw them, everyone on Main Street, which was almost named Toll street saw them, even Richard I Toll saw them from his mansion on Gwinnett’s most ostentatious East side. And out on the northern edge of town where the sharp drop of the north Georgia Smokeys gives way to the hills which slope which gently down to the outskirts of Gwinett and where it levels out the thick woods give way to a wide swatch of grassy divide on which the builders made sure there was not a single tree the old Vietnam vet John Machado saw them. He was sitting on his front porch which faced uphill and into the woods, away from Gwinett, because it was one of the only remaining homes not built by the Toll Brothers, when he thought that he saw it.  He sat there in his denim cutoffs a sweaty white T-shirt and almost thought he could see the woods moving down the hill a little, like watching grass grow, never enough not to be noticed on a single sitting. First he thouhgt it was an illusion, but the instant he could focus in on it the illusion seemed to end. He hadn’t seen anything like it since Nam, and that’s probably the only reason it registered, the other poor town’s slobs wouldn’t have noticed it at all. The Viet Cong moved like that, slowly, steadily, like the hour hand on a clock to slow to notice, but steady enough to eventually get close. But there was something else, the way the trees and bushes took form then lost it when you looked right at them, but if you look askance it formed up again, into something, something moving, something stalking, something dangerous. John Machado had seen it many times, tripping on acid, other times straight as an arrow, during combat in the jungles of Vietnam, but not since. He had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, another feeling he hadn't had since Nam. It was a feeling of knowing without knowing how, that Charlie was laid up in the bushes just ahead. It was the way he always knew if his girlfriends were cheating on him. John Machado went to the basement to get his automatic rifle. When he came back up and looked out the window he saw coyotes running toward town. He locked the doors and dropped the storm shutters across the windows and grabbed his shotgun as well. And for the rest of that hot muggy morning through the blistering afternoon John Machado did not go back outside.

The coyote pack moved briskly East across the foreclosure wasteland, past week the rotting corpse of Sheriff Matt Millen and swarmed unnoticed past the manicured yards and swimming pools, with barely so much as a ruffled bush and only later would some people notice their pets had disappeared, past the Starbucks and the Walmart, they slipped still unseen until deputy Barry Jensen saw the horde of them descending upon the town square where the high school marching band was preparing to lead the Memorial Day parade down Main Street, which would have been Toll Street. Jensen saw that no one else saw, and flipped on the lights and siren of his cruiser. To his horror no one took notice, they thought it was just part of the parade. Finally he drew his side arm and fired several times into the air. 16-year-old Suzie Whitmore, the blonde hair blue eyed hands-down favorite for homecoming queen, was calling Jazmine Jimenez a slut for sleeping with her boyfriend and quarterback Bo Wilson when their attention was ripped by the sound of Barry Jensen's 9 mm. Everyone heard the sound of Jensen's voice on the PA, but no one heard a word he said mesmerized as they were by the site of thousands of coyotes surrounding the square. Jensen pleaded for everyone to remain in the center of the square, everyone make a circle, those with firearms on the outer ring. It was the prudent strategy, but for residents of Gwinnett panic not prudence was the order of the day.

Faced with a salivating snarling horde of menacing coyotes the people in the square broke in all directions. Bo Johnson himself, the object of acrimony between blonde, goody two shoes Suzie Whitmore and the darkly seductive Jazmine Jimenez went immediately directly up to the highest branches of the huge Oak tree in the center of the square. He was joined there by others. Susie initially froze, but Jasmine bolted in blind terror. It was the kind of blind terror that was numb too and so she did not feel the pain of her broken ankle which she twisted stepping into a pothole just beyond where the cars were parked diagonally pointing into the square. She simply got up and ran without the knowledge that her left foot dangled from it's fragile ankle. She couldn't feel her body's message that was pain, nor could she keep her balance for the dangling foot which left blood marks on the pavement. When she fell this time it was on her face and stomach with the palms of her manicured hands splayed out on the rough pavement. Those same palms which just hours ago had felt so soft to Bo as they caressed his member, were each bleeding in a stream. Somehow terror gave her strength to raise and take another step. And that was her last step, because she was hit by a car and knocked 50 feet into the air, her body coming to a hard stop against the pink concrete wall on  which was Amber's hair and nail salon.

Her body curled there in the fetal position, the intense pain reviving consciousness. She tried to push up with her bloody palms against the sidewalk. That's when she realized that what she thought was a car was a coyote. It was snarling, and salivating, and the stench of its breath would have made her sick. But she was beyond that now, watching it differently as it casually approached her, stood on her, heavy like a truck, then viciously ripped her throat out in one clamp of its jaws. Jazmine Jimenez died on her back within expression of either praying, or orgasmic triumph, but her heart was still working overtime and blood was still pumping in ample arteriole squirts through her carotids. That is how Suzie Whitmore found her seconds later. Susie who had finally broken out of her fear frozen trance made it unencumbered out of the square across the street into the front of Amber's hair and nail salon. She ran in energetic panic strides, but she stopped just long enough to gaze at the blood squirting corpse of Jazmine Jimenez and think, bitch got what she deserved. It was the last thought that the hands-down favorite for homecoming queen ever had. Something shaped like a V was clamping down on her neck from behind, she never felt her head hitting the concrete hard splitting wide open. Seconds later 16-year-old Suzie Whitmore the hands-down favorite for homecoming queen had been chewed and shredded to pieces by coyotes on a vicious feeding frenzy.

A number of people made their escape up the oak tree. One of them was Mr. Pace, Gwinnett High’s physical education teacher. He was easily one of the most unlikely men to ever find in a tree. The way his hands flailed, and sneakers skidded over the tree bark as his chubby legs churned made it obvious that he had been in one for many years. No sooner had he made his way just above this snapping, jumping jaws from below, with frantically pin wheeling arms did he lose his balance.

It was only good luck and the strong-arm of Bo Wilson that saved him. Bo's made incidental contact with his just long enough for them both to hold on. "Easy Mr. Pace", Bo cajoled in his team captain's voice. Bo helped Mr. Pace lift his girth safely into the crotch of two branches. With all cacophony screaming and snarling on the ground Mr. Pace looked up at Bo, looked up at the branches snaking their way skyward and caught his breath.

Once situated there Mr. Pace reached into the waistband of his trousers manipulating a bit of fat on his belly out of the way in the process. He came out with a 45 and handed it to Bo. "Here you take this son, I know you know what to do with it." Bo took it eagerly, he strapped on the holster, but kept the gun out pointing at the coyotes swirling below. "Can coyotes climb Mr. Pace?" "I sure hope not, but if they try to take as many as you can." “I sure will sir,” he said and each was as grateful for the transaction as the other.

Mr. Pace was right about Bo Wilson. Handsome, polite, and a personable, Bo Wilson, always knew what to do. He had known just what to do with 14-year-old Sharon Pace less than 12 hours ago.

Barney Jensen racked the shotgun inside of his cruiser. Peter Connor huddled on armed with his family inside of SUV. They were equally helpless, there were totally helpless if the coyotes decided to attack. On the opposite end of the town square from Amber's hair and nail salon the one which Matt Millen had spoken to Richard I Toll of removing his brother's body several patrons huddled in the restrooms and behind the counters. 

Two doors down was a Stone Cold in the patrons there were not nearly so lucky. The coyotes smashed through the plate glass windows and shredded everyone inside. The sound of glass breaking and people shrieking was all the Starbucks patrons could hear as they huddled under the counters and tables and wondered if they were next. Meanwhile out on Gwinnett's ostentatious eastern end, Richard I Toll the man unwittingly responsible for all of this sat alone in his mansion unmolested. It was only a curiosity to him, looking beyond the pool to where the lush woods come right up to his personal golf course the coyotes were bounding about. But it was a curiosity for which he had short interest. Where the fuck is Matt Millen, why hasn't he called me? was all he could think. Tillman had been slow to remove his brother's body, and now was avoiding him altogether. This was a level of insubordination that could not be overlooked. Matt was the one who had murdered his brother, but he was the one who framed him. If either one was discovered then so was the other. Maybe Tillman didn't see it that way, maybe Tillman would have to be disciplined in a sterner fashion, the fashion of discipline which he himself had dispensed to his brother Bruce eight years ago. But as his mind searched through its personal Rolodex for who he could get to do to Tillman what Tillman was supposed to do to others, it came up blank.

 Richard I Toll to whom discipline would be ferreted out, nor how.

Richard I Toll went to his desk poured himself a double scotch leaned back in his huge leather seat took a deep long drink. He put the glass on the desk with a sigh. How did it get this way, he wondered. Why the fuck would anyone want to go tearing down foreclosed homes, most of them not even lived in. You should have seen this coming, his mind said to him. But it was unforeseeable he defended himself. His arrogance, like his brother’s would never allow for self-incrimination it was better suited towards spreading it around. Usually his arrogance served him well as his brother’s had served him. But sometimes it did not, his brother could not conceive that Matt Millen would double-cross him and it cost him a brutal beating to end his life. Richard I Toll read about the coyotes in the paper he owns and saw a few scattered on his golf course without a clue of what they could do to him.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and took another sip. He put the glass down with a thud on the glass top of his huge wooden desk. He moved the bottom of the glass in flat circles on the desktop, watching the brown golden liquid swirl in its glassy reflection. It was so simple he thought, it was so simple that we wondered how no one could see the scam hidden right in front of their eyes. He chalked it up to their inferiority, which implied his superiority. The masses he thought are incapable of making and keeping fortunes like his. Better not to spread the wealth around, better to keep it concentrated in the hands of the capable few, his hands. He took another sip seeing his reflection in the glass as he cuddled it in his hands. In the old days builders like Toll Brothers always lost money on the homes they built, and only made their profit by the increase in the value of each lot after the home was built and by financing the homes themselves. Initially Toll Brothers were happy to do business like everyone else did, but their collective arrogance soon got the better of them. They thought they could monopolize the business, and gouge the public, but they didn't know how. Then as if they had ordered room service, the Federal Reserve and the FHA gave them the means to do it. First the Federal Reserve made interest rates ridiculously low so that the Toll Brothers could go out on leverage, massive leverage to buy land. Leveraged money was what brought Gwinnett Township. Then the FHA guaranteed the loans. Hallelujah, I couldn't get any better than that. Before the FHA backstop the Toll Brothers would frisk prospective borrowers pretty roughly, but after the backstop they would make home loans to anything that could fog a mirror. Of course there were some pesky little due diligence legal requirements, but to influential lawyers like the Toll Brothers it was like hurtling over a penny on the ground. So, the Toll Brothers leverage the market share and leveraged other builders right out of business. At the height of the bubble brothers were even making money on the houses themselves. They would simply add $200,000 or $300,000 arbitrarily to the price of a home and laugh about it. The borrowers didn't care because they had a low interest loan and the false belief that home prices go up forever. Not even the Toll Brothers believed that home prices would go up forever. Nothing goes up forever.

Nothing goes up forever, but the scam went on so long that the only significant competition for the Toll Brothers was the Toll Brothers. That's when Richard I Toll outbid Bruce Toll to kill his brother by $100,000. Greed was the motive while arrogance was the enabler that made each man think he could kill the other and get away with it. Neither perceived the treachery of the other, arrogance is blind. $200,000 was a bargain Richard I toll thought with no idea that $100,000 was the margin by which his life hung.

Gwinnett Township was not the last development for Toll Brothers, but it was the last done when they were both alive. It was standard, easy really, even funny at one point. The Toll Brothers bought all of the land on which Gwinnett Township was built at bargain basement prices on leverage, but there was a 5 acre spot right where the Banyan tree and Town hall are situated. Right where right now customers in Starbucks are hearing customers in stone cold being ripped to shreds and clinging to the faintest hopes that they won't be next, right where Suzie Whitmore and Jazmine Jimenez lie in each other's bloody shredded bodies, right there were 5 acres preserved for an old Cherokee Indian named Arkaquah. The old man was living in a teepee and living off the land around it.

When the Toll Brothers couldn't buy him out, they did what lawyers naturally do and went to court. Arkaquah defended himself. He did a pretty good job to, he won. “Mr. Arkaquah has clear and valid contract with the state of Georgia," Judge McIntosh who had been their friend said in issuing his judgment. But the brothers were not so easily dissuaded. "The judge has issued his order now let's see him enforce it," Bruce toll said quoting Jackson. Both men laughed heartily because they remembered that the Cherokee Indians had sued Andrew Jackson when he tried to remove them from their lands. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Jackson lost. Then Jackson issued his famous retort and sent the Cherokees down the trail of tears. The brothers summoned Matt Tillman and suggested that he put a little of his lean weight on the old man. The Toll Brothers stripped the land all the way to the edge of the old man's property so that Matt Tillman could get close enough to put his lean weight on him. Over the course of a few months Tillman gave the old man several broken ribs, a broken nose, and with a ruptured liver and with that finally the old man left. But not before putting a curse on both brothers, one which he delivered as soon as he got out of the hospital. The old coot even did a war dance right in their office lobby. Richard I Toll's lips curled upward in a snide smile as he remembered it. But by the time that old man did his dance in the lobby, his land was stripped like the rest of Gwinnett Township right to the Banyan tree. They didn't know what kind of curse he put on them nor could they care. The old man was gone 5 min. and they didn't even half to call on Tillman to remove him. The last he heard, six weeks later the old Indian’s liver gave up, dumped a gallon of bile into his blood and he drowned in the poisons of his own body. The sarcastic smile was just fading from Richard I Toll's deeply lined face as he pondered once again what could be up with Sheriff Tillman, he would never find out. It was finally the sound of shattering glass that wiped the snide smile off Richard I Toll's face. It seemed to come from far away it in the vacant mansion. That would be unlikely indeed, because the security system gave no indication of intruders. But he couldn't take chances, it might even be Matt Tillman coming for him. Richard Toll reached for his gun in his desk drawer, but when he heard the clear crashing sound of multiple windows breaking at once, his old legs broke quickly across the room to a closet from which he removed her high-powered automatic rifle. Then he heard it, the snarling and snapping coyotes just outside the double doors to his office. Something hit the door with a tremendous force and it rattled in place. Outside the window he saw coyotes gathering. Another crash and the snarling coyote pride his way into the office; many others waited outside, like obedient clients waiting to be invited in. Richard I Toll was not scared, not yet, but when he fired several shots into the beast's head with no effect, he wet his pants. The firm bush that stood just outside his office window rattled violently back and forth as if shaken by a hurricane. Then as if picked up from the roots by a tornado, it spun on its axis taking odd shapes one after the other, illusions he was sure of, until it became the coyote. Then it stopped, crashed through the bulletproof glass. Richard I Toll almost thought this can't be happening, but before the thought was finished it was happening. All of the coyotes swarmed in, no longer obedient clients. He emptied his clip as they descended. He felt the vice grip teeth sinking into his ankles as he was yanked  down violently, slapping his head on the carpet in the process knocking him partially unconscious. He felt something working on his groin. It was a single coyote, the one that had been a firm bush he thought. It did in deep and hard, and the pain came in waves. The first wave jolted him back to consciousness. Then the snarling beast began to shake, lifting his hips up and off the floor in a grotesque sexual manner. But there was nothing sexual about this, the coyote was literally ripping his balls off. And as the pain reached a crescendo all he could think was this was like torture. Others joined in ripping to his stomach and throat. The last thing that Richard I toll saw before the coyotes ripped him to shreds, was the face on one of them turned into be that of the old Indian, Arkaquah.

They found the throat-ed body of Matt Tillman Monday after Memorial Day. Barry Jensen had organized search parties. Father and son Michael and Daniel Parker came across him just as the coyotes had left him, head leaned back over the head rest an entire portion of his throat gone frozen in a silent scream that would never end and never be heard. Barry Jensen found what was left of Richard I Toll on the following day. Barry said that he reckoned that the blood and tissue fiber and shredded clothing all belonged to Toll. Right now he really didn't give a shit, he had a bigger problem, which was to stop these coyote attacks. He had called the Georgia Bureau of investigation and pleaded for help, but they told him what he had said so often, is that there was no crime. The agent there told him dismissively to call the state game and wildlife agency and he told the agent to kiss his ass. Right now he had to deal with panic and anger and men wanting to go into the woods and shoot anything that moved, and at least 20 dead people on Memorial Day alone. There were no injuries, whoever the coyotes attacked, they killed. Actually he thought going into the woods to hunt the coyotes wasn't a bad idea,except for the distinct possibility that they would shoot each other. So, he drew up a list of names he trusted and drove to each of their houses personally. On the top of the list was a old Vietnam vet who lived in his dead parent's house on the edge of town, John Machado. Charles Wilson, Bo Wilson's father was on the list too, but Charles was unknown to him already ripped pieces under the Banyan tree.

in which a ball was trapped. 

Chuck Wilson was in the Starbucks when he saw the coyotes swarm in and his son retreating up the tree. He would have been fine if he had remained inside, but he had no way to know that then. He had no way to know that the 45 in his waistband would do absolutely no good against these coyotes, he had no idea that he would be tackled, throat-ed, gnawed and dismembered to pieces by a swarming pack of unearthly coyotes that came from the vindictive mind of an old man. Mercifully Bo Wilson while taking Mr. Pace's gun didn't see a thing. Barry studied Bo, sitting on the kitchen chair with a blank look of shock across his face. He knew the boy was young, and he knew that he was grief stricken, but he also knew that he could shoot, he knew that his father had taught him well. And he didn't have to ask twice.

Barry Jensen assembled the men the following morning, 20 in all and they made their plans for the hunt. Barry Jensen considered his posse. These were townspeople, common people, good people, but they were serious ones as well. There were no yuppie weekend warriors, no Rambo want to bees. This job demanded serious men and he had chosen them well. But so far neither he nor one of these men had had any idea how totally useless guns would be against these coyotes. There was no trouble picking up tracks, there seem to be infinitely many of them going up into the woods and hills in every direction around town. Finally Barry Jensen just took one set at random and followed them into the lush green woods and gently rolling hills whose gentle appearance belied all the horrors that lie within. It wasn't necessary for Sheriff Jensen to arm his posse, most people in this part of Georgia, save for the yuppies had their own firearms, and he had made certain that there were no yuppies in this group. They all had hunting rifles, most had semiautomatic weapons as well. John Machado still had his AK-47 that he had appropriated from the dead Vietcong 40 years ago. He remembered it well, all of the US troops were discarding their M-16s which jammed and overheated in combat. The epidemic was so severe that the U.S. Army ordered the troops not to use the AK-47, because the site of Americans using a Russian rifle in Vietnam on the CBS news with Walter Cronkite was more than the Pentagon could handle. Machado disobeyed the order. He was armed now as he was then, with an AK-47 for long-distance, a sawed-off pump shotgun for short distance, and a 9 mm as a weapon of last resort. The 9 mm was there although he was well aware that if you drew the 9 mm you are already dead. It was well-known amongst the troops that you never brought a 9 mm to a gunfight. The 9 mm was meant just for you. Just in case.

Barry Jensen led the men into the woods single file, John Machado was second. The ordering was mere formality. John Machado was the best shot and tracker among them, and everyone in town knew it. On top of that he had experienced combat in Vietnam. Holding up the rear were Bo Wilson  who was their neighbor and had been his own dad's best friend. The sun was still low and casting shadows on every dew soaked surface in the woods. John Machado remembered Vietnam vividly. He had been in the woods many times since returning from the killing fields, but never in a platoon like group such as this. He remembered the feeling that the jungle had eyes, the Charlie lay just in the brush ahead, waiting to ambush. Everyone was convinced to some degree or another that each step would be their last, that this moment would be their end. It was part of the pressure cooker that was daily life over there. John had not been immune to it, and he had supposed that Charlie was there, when he wasn't. But he was never wrong when he was sure, and when he was sure his body would just take over. Once he disobeyed a Sgt. and dove off the path into the brush just as Charlie opened up. He remembered that laying there in the brush as his friends were cut to pieces. Then the Vietcong searched the brush for him. He lay there, on his stomach knowing each breath really could be his last. He was helpless as he could see one of Charlie's boots on the ground inches in front of him. But it wasn't his last breath, the Vietcong moved silently away into the jungle and 12 men lay dead in the path. The reason John Machado remembered that was because he was getting that sense of surety again. The woods here are not nearly as thick as the jungle was in Vietnam. There, they didn't have real trails, it was really just men pushing through the jungle. Here the trees were spaced out, and there was clear visibility for a 100 feet on either side of the trail, only from there did the brush gradually thicken away from the trail to a lush wall of green through which a man could not see. But whatever danger John Machado could not see he could sense, sense it with the same certainty as if it were right in front of his eyes. The men spotted a single coyote up ahead. It ambled out of the woods and onto the trail and stared casually at them from about 300 feet away. The men looked at the coyote, but John Machado scanned the woods. There was something odd about this coyote, Barry Jensen just couldn't quite figure out what it was. Maybe it was a trick of the early-morning lighting, but the coyote almost seemed green. "Go ahead Barry take the first shot," Don Maddox said. The others joined in urging him to shoot. Barry hesitated still contemplating the weirdness of the coyote, but when it turned and bounded back into the woods he raised his rifle, took careful aim and squeezed. The ka-pow shattered the morning silence and sent birds fluttering skyward. But it had absolutely no effect on the coyote. It trotted off into the green underbrush. The men stood in stony silence. Barry Jensen had not missed, and they knew that he had not missed. The only one who hadn't seen it was John Machado because he was looking into the woods. Then the men convinced each other that Barry Jensen indeed had missed such an easy shot. Just bad luck, that's all, what else could it be? Barry Jensen knew better, but he didn't say anything. "Boys there's something in the woods on both sides of us," Machado said. Barry Jensen looked at him seriously for a second. “Should we stop John?" he asked.  “Not yet,” John said. ``As long as we have good clearance on either side we can go on, but everyone keep your eyes peeled." Then another coyote casually strolled out from the underbrush into clear site and back onto the path in front of them. As Barry Jensen raised his rifle again the coyote broke and bolted down the path. "Said the spider to the fly," John Machado whispered to himself. Then as he had in Vietnam Machado took point and began to moving as he did then several quick steps and stop,several more and then stop. He moved that way with the others trailing, up to the coyote tracks. Then he went to where they were, still scanning the brush 360°, examined the tracks by putting his hand on the moist earth in which they were embedded. The track seemed normal enough maybe the coyote was a little heavier then he looked, nothing more. The men had finally convinced themselves that whatever caused Barry Jensen to miss it was a fluke and wouldn't happen again. But when John Machado lifted his rifle and squeezed two into the coyote with the air shattering ka-pow of the AK-47 with no effect on the animal at all they could no longer pretend to not be afraid. John and Barry Jensen were both perplexed, but the others Don Modesto and Bo Wilson and the rest stared into each other's terrified eyes mainly for answers where none were to be found. "Tighten up, everybody shut up and tighten up and don't panic if you want to get out of here alive." John Machado chastised them in a stern but whispered voice. The men stood shoulder to shoulder some looking left some looking right and they moved that way back down the trail from which they had just come. Nearing panic, everyone strained intently for the slightest motion. John Machado noticed it first but held his tongue. The path which had been cleared underbrush hundred feet on either side on the way in seemed to have grown large leafy shrubs up to no more than 10 feet of either side. On Machado's command the men fired a couple of rounds into the brush, then waited for the cacophony of explosions from the ends of their barrels and the acrid smell of gunpowder in the air to subside. 

They stood there, in stone cold silence until it subsided, after it subsided. For a long time they stood like, frozen in fear and disbelief. Then as if a stiff wind from a storm front was moving through, all the trees especially in the bushes newly encroached upon the path began to shake and dance wildly back and forth from their roots. There was no wind, just the trees moving violently and the ear splitting screech like 100 jet airplanes taking off at once. Don Modesto felt something behind them in turn to see the green leafy bushes spinning in space like a green tornado taking the shape of coyotes, three of them for them, he couldn't tell, but he pulled the trigger and sprayed the animals. One of them jumped on his back with a 

force that snapped his head backwards and implanted his face so far in the soft dirt that he couldn’t breath. But he could feel the coyote viciously ripping away chunks of flesh from his back and lat and shoulder. He was able to lift his head long enough to see Bo Wilson shooting ineffectually into the coyotes that were chewing into him. The last thing Don Modesto saw was Bo Wilson getting knocked to the ground, his gun flying into the sky like a cheerleader's twirling baton. Two coyotes grabbed him by the throat and ripped his head off. At the same time John Machado saw a green fern swirl in to the form of a coyote and pounce on Barry Jensen from behind. Without delay he slung his AK-47 over his back the way a woman would throw her long hair back. Then in the same motion he came up with the shotgun, pump already in action. Amazingly it worked. Not well, but it did work. The first shot knocked the beast off of Jensen, when it turned to jump on him Machado was already working the pump action in the point blank blasts disfigured the animal's face and snout. Several more pumps sent him running back into the bushes. He spun around and blasted two more coming from behind. It took two shots into each one to send them away, but Machado was already working the pump action like an automatic spinning and spraying the firing just above Barry Jensen who was on his knees to stay clear. Then the sickening dry click click sound indicating that Machado was empty. The coyotes seemed to sense it and ceased fleeing and began to circle. From Barry Jensen on his knees he could see a coyote straddling the unconscious Bo Wilson and was preparing to sink his teeth deep into the boy's throat. In desperation he lit a road flare and threw it at the coyote. It landed on the animals back and it seemingly caught on fire. The coyotes darted like 1000 roaches at the flip of the light, back into the woods. Bo Johnson had only been knocked unconscious and Barry was bringing him around, but the rest of them had been ripped to shreds in the most brutal and horrible fashion. Walking past the bodies John Machado thought he'd never seen anything like this, not even in Nam. Stephen Morgan lay across the path on his back, his eyes completely gone from their sockets and his stomach ripped open to the rib cage, he was completely disemboweled. He stepped over Morgan's body slowly turning backwards as he did, Don Modesto was decapitated, his heart still pumping in huge arterial spurts. Bo Wilson, groaning was just coming to. Barry Jensen helped him to his feet. The three of them were not cautious. As soon as Bo Wilson was stable enough the three of them trotted out of the woods. When they returned to their cars it wasn't even 11 AM, 17 lay slain on the path.

Barry Jensen was trying to figure out what to do. Richard I Toll would try to cover it up, would probably do it to, but in addition to informing 17 families that they had just lost their father, a brother, a son, Barry Jensen had to find a way to tell the world that he had just discovered a pack of coyotes that could not even brought down by bullets and not sound like a madman in the process. But he was about to have help from the coyotes themselves. It seems while they were having their fun in the woods, coyotes simultaneously attacked cars and drivers on the only road going into and out of Gwinnett Township. He could hear them calling madly for him on the CB. "What went on out there?” Bo Wilson asked them both. "You saw it with your own eyes. We shot the coyotes and they chewed us to pieces." John Machado replied as if he were telling him what time it was. "And nothing happened," Wilson said in a pleading sense. "Yep,”Machado said and walked to his car motioning for the kid to follow. "He's a man of few words,” Jensen said, "You go with him now."

They are right Jensen thought, Gwinnett Road looked like it had been bombed and strafed by fighter jets. Abandoned cars with their doors open, some with bodies hanging out, were strewn in both directions from the outside shoulder of the inbound road to the outside shoulder of the outbound side. Standing on the hood of the SUV that Tillman used to drive, Jensen could make out the carnage. People mobbed him like he was a rock star to tell their story with disbelief. Kim Pool was going to visit her mother, just north of the South Carolina line told him how she ran her car over them again and again, but they just kept coming at her. In the side view mirror she could see one bite the rear tire and pin her car to the ground. Others broke through the windshield and they were coming in until, for no reason at all they stopped and left. Even through his binoculars he could hear Tom Morrison who had begun his ritualistic morning commute to Atlanta say how he emptied the clip of his 9 mm into one coyote and it did absolutely no good. The animal bit his hand, and it was wrapped now with his business tie and bloodstained his white button up business suit. He looked down to see that the man in shock with the bloody hand still had the top button of his shirt buttoned. Anal prick he thought, then wondered where did that come from. But it was the next thought that enters and entered his mind when he looked back out at the carnage through the binocular, which terrified him. They mean to cut us off, they mean to isolate us and kill us all. He was right about that. Barry Jensen was a lot smarter than Matt Millen, but still not the kind of man to spend a great deal of time examining his thoughts. But this one had come with as much clarity as it did surety. He called John Machado and asked to meet him at the station, but to his surprise John Machado was already there.

"What the hell was that John?" he asked as a little boy would his big brother for help. John Machado had already replayed the movie in his mind. "You got them with the flare," he said. "Good one.” “That was just blind dumb luck.” “Yeah, maybe, maybe it was the first time, but not from now on." "What do you mean?" Jensen asked looking perplexed. "First we both know that the coyote didn't come out of the brush, they were the brush. The rifles it bother them at all, but did you see what happened when I hit them with a shotgun?” “Yeah I did,” Jensen said. “I sure did. It stunned them and it looked like a cloud of green leafy stuff was blasted out of them”. “That's right, then you hit them with the flare and burned shit out of them." “Yeah, that's right I forgot about that." "I didn't Machado said with a deadly serious look in his eyes.”Suddenly Jensen knew that Machado knew exactly what to do. So, he didn't have to be told to listen carefully.

“Barry, there are broad strokes and there are pinstripes. Sometimes the broad strokes cover the shit out of the pinstripes.” Barry Jensen sat in his chair. Machado sat in the desk across from him. One time in Nam we were pinned down by sniper. The whole fucking platoon pinned down by one guy, a 12 or 13-year-old kid who could shoot the eyeball out of a buzzard from a mile away. The kid was somewhere in a clump of rocks up above us. We had good cover down there, but the kid was picking us off one by one. But I still figured I could make my way around to the top of the rocks. I was wrong,” he said pointing to his left shoulder. “He got me on my first step out. The God damned force of it lifted me off my feet and spun me around a couple of times before I even hit the ground. I won't even lie to you, that was the first time I was shot and up to that point the most pain I've ever been in my life, up to that point.” Jensen knew that Machado had been shot several times, but he didn't know that the more pain that he referred to had nothing to do with the physical. "Anyway I was laying there pumping blood into the jungle and I was in the open. In the wide fucking open. It's funny at times like that, when you know you're dead and there is just nothing you can do. Kind of what it must be like to see another car coming at you. You do everything to get away, but the last few fractions of a second when you know there is nothing you can do, when you know you're dead. Times like that you just accept it. That's what I did Barry.” He said looking now directly into Barry's eyes. "Then outta nowhere comes my best friend Dave Mayberry. Dave was this great big huge black kid from Chicago. He had the biggest hands you ever seen. He comes in and he grabs me with this great big fucking hands like I was a feather and throws me on his back and carries me into cover. I still see it like it was yesterday, no sooner was I on his back that I saw a bullet go into the ground where I had been. He was 19, he saved my life, he wanted to be in the NFL. I gotta believe he woulda made it too, but he stepped on landmine in DeNang and they sent him back to Chicago with his right leg blown off clear the hip. Two years later he died in a VA hospital of cancer, agent orange. I never even got to see him." Geez Jensen thought. "Anyway the first thing Mayberry did after depositing me safely in cover was to grab the acetylene flamethrower, and I don't know how he did it, but he made it up close enough to burn that little bastard out. He just scorched the son of bitch to death. We all felt real happy about it at first, until we saw the size of the body. Like I said he couldn't have been more than 12 or 13 years old. But you can bet your ass that his mother would not recognize his face. Shit, what a place that was."

Anyway the kid was like the pinstripes, but my buddy Mayberry he was playing with the broad strokes. See what I mean? We have to stop worrying about how is this happening, and what are we up against and we have to start thinking in broad strokes." “Flamethrowers is that your suggestion John? Well, from what I've seen that sounds like a reasonable idea. The next time they come down from the hills, we will burn the shit outta them. "Fuck it, they are bushes”, he said as if he were embarrassed for saying something so stupid. “Yeah, I am suggesting flamethrowers but not waiting for them to come down to burn them like bushes. I'm suggesting going out into the woods and burning them like bushes and trees and grass and whatever the hell else they are that they are. Right now we get whatever gasoline, flares, or any thing else flammable and go up into the woods and burn them down,all of them down, and I mean to say all the way to the ground”. “Everything,” Jensen asked disbelievingly. “All of it Machado,” reaffirmed leaning forward unconsciously stressing the point.” We don't have time, they can come down right now and there's not a damn thing we could do. People would grab their guns and start shooting, but you and I know how much good that would do. We can't try to take them off like a sniper in the rocks, we have got to burn them all out at once, while you still can.” “John we could burn ourselves down while we're at it.” “That is a chance we have to take. Right now we are sitting down here helpless. At least get some people out there to spread the info to use fire instead of guns, but they are coming for us Barry, I don't feel it I know it.” Yea I know it too John. They are cutting us off at the main gate, no one has been in or out since this morning and pretty soon it's going to look like hurricane Katrina around here. But burn all these woods down around us?” He drew a big circle in the air with his finger as he said it. Could we even start something big enough? I'm afraid to ask, do you have a flamethrower John?” Machdo nodded. “Yep, jury rigged one my self ten years ago when we had those brown bears coming down picking through the trash cans. Remember old man Miller, thought he could handle em with with just his 324?” “How could I forget John? I was the one who caught the bear that ate him. All we found in that bear's belly was three rounds from old man Miller's 324 and what was left of old man Miller.” “Well Barry you've answered your own question haven’t you?” Jensen's mind went blank and he turned away absently. “I know there's a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. It's a big call for such a young man to make, but it's one you can't afford to hide from, none of us can afford for you to hide from.”

Barry Jensen looked at John Machado for a long time. At 35 years old he no longer thought of himself as young. But here was John Machado, an icon talking to him like a father, or older brother at least. Saying to him, I know you are pissing your pants, don't even try to tell me you're not. But I've been there, it's okay to be pissing your pants at a time like this. Just do the right thing. But that is not what gave Jensen the courage to do the right thing, it was the sound of random gunfire off in the distance that told him that people were dying, that they were shooting in vain coyotes against whom bullets had no effect. It was maybe only 10 or 15 shots that suddenly stopped, and Barry Johnson knew exactly what that cease-fire represented.”Okay John, okay, let’s burn it. But as soon as we do, I'm going to make a break for help. Maybe Duluth, maybe all the way to Atlanta if I have to. But I am going to make a break for it. '' Machado nodded in silent agreement, but was secretly thinking, if things could only be so easy.

Barry Jensen set the fires on the southern end of town, the part closest to the main road, the part closest to Interstate 85 and the outside world. Volunteer Fire Chief Bill Gannon took David Dickens, John Monson, all-state quarterback Bo Wilson, and a dozen other men to the central western extreme of Gwinnett Village, while John Machado aimed to set the northern rim of the woods ablaze. Everyone agreed that there just were not enough bodies nor incendiaries to get the woods on the eastern end of the development. So, folks out there would be encourages to evacuate to the west or left to fend for themselves. What no one knew was that while they fretted over who would go to the east side there remained no one alive to evacuate from the east side. In the few short minutes that it took to decide on their own plans everyone forgot all about the ostentatious east side any way.

Barry Jensen used road flares and bear repellent as a makeshift flamethrower and used them to burn half a dozen coyotes menacing him as he stepped from his vehicle at the edge of the road. The coyotes appeared from nowhere to make a snarling ring around his police cruiser when he stopped it. They look like statues he thought, noticing how each one look exactly like the other, as if each was an exact replica of some original mold. He kicked the door open with his left foot and lit the flare, which he held in his right hand, at the same time. Then he dropped the lighter and grabbed the bear repellent with his left hand and exited the vehicle. The coyotes snarling and snapping all at once pounced, but Jensen turning his body, let loose with the bear repellent, giving the effect of the flaming lawn sprinkler. The burning coyotes ran off howling, and disappeared as smoke into the air just before Jensen burning his own hands and had to drop the flare. He got back into his police cruiser, drop it into four-wheel-drive and drove off the road as far as he could. He used the incendiaries that Bill Gannon had left with him to set some leafy vegetation on fire, then he jumped back into the cruiser and high tailed it for the highway. From what he could see of his fire in the rear-view, as he drove bouncing back to the asphalt he could only think, it will never be enough, but it would have to be, it would just have to be. On the way out he managed to break a cold pack and apply it to his scorched right-hand. And as the pain of his burn really set in, he thought I'm never going to make it, but I got it, I've just got to.

While Barry Jensen was roasting vegetarian coyotes and setting the southern section ablaze, Fire Chief Bill Gannon, David Dickens, John Monson, all-state quarterback Bo Johnson, and the dozen other men with him were trying to do the same. Bill Gannon had rigged the town square with fourth of July fireworks to burn on the ground rather than explode in the air, and they were using them as flammable mortars shooting them off into the forest due west of the development. His first group of fire starters he could not have been more pleased with. They shot straight over 500 yards into the woods and set off that would have rivaled Hells Inferno itself. A wall of orange hot flames shot more than 1000 feet into the air changing color into black swirling cauldrons that shot up another hundred feet. Bill Gannon looked like just a speck in comparison. The woods were shape shifting into Wolves and coyotes that charged into the flaming wall. For all of its raging heat, they could not hold back all of them. When Bill Gannon jumped back into his truck some of the flaming beast pursued. He stepped on the gas hard, feeling his butt leave the seat as his head crashed into the cab’s roof. Hisbody  twisted sideways, and he didn’t have to feel a thing as the truck pitched and rolled like a ship at sea, rolling to the point that he was sure it was going to roll over before righting, over correcting to the other side, and then finally bouncing up right as the dirt and grass splashed over the hood and he could feel their next stench assail his nostrils.

He had made it though, as his truck bounded sideways he could see the wall of flame to his left and rear, but nothing chased him. To the right lay the relative safety of the paved road. Better not push my luck he thought as the truck came finally under his full control again. But there were at least ten more mortars in the truck bed. Bill Gannon slowed his truck and turned it left toward the woods. He found a spot about a mile north of where he’d set the woods ablaze  just moments ago. He locked up the breaks bringing the big machine to a sliding dirt spiting stop and lept from the cab before it had even come to a complete stop. Then he bounded over the rail and into the bed. He was immediately dismayed to find the several of the mortars had bounced out and that now he had only three remaining. Instead of waiting to set them all off at once, this time he fired them one at a time. The first one went deep into the woods to his southwest, the flames went straight and high. The second one went due west with equally admirable results. The last one was marked to the Northwest. Unbelievably the fuse lit and then burned out. Leave it he thought, better not push your luck he thought again, but when he looked around he could not see a single beast. So, he cut the fuse about six inches and lit it again. In a second the firework made mortar was in the air, but he never saw it take flight. Something rough and stinking hit him hard from his left side and drove him into the left rear quaterpannel of the pickup. The pain of the brutal impact was instantly anesthetist by the teeth crushing the entire left side of his ribcage. The last thought that Bill Gannon had was that, I shouldn’t have pushed my luck.

While Bill Gannon was having his ribs crushed in and his guts eaten out by a band of coyotes, two miles to the just within earshot of his last dying screams Bo Johnson and Tim McIntyre were having a little Fourth of July party of their own.

McIntyre heard something that made him pause, but only slightly conscious that it was his friend and former Fire Chief Bill Gannon's last agonizing sounds. Straining to recognize the importance of what he thought he heard, his attention was ripped to what he knew he was seeing. It was Bo Wilson intoxicated with grief and rage rushing headlong into the woods with only a handful of various incendiaries and nothing for protection. Stupid kid he thought, there is no protection from the coyote teeth. Bo Wilson ran fast and the grass around swirled up into the shape of a coyote. As it did he lit his flare and burned it like the bush that it was. Good job kid, good job McIntyre thought. Then he saw Johnson fall in the tall grass as if snagged by an animal trap and not come up. "Bo, Bo'" he screamed. Stupid kid, he thought as he jumped into the truck and speed, bouncing the hundred yards to where the boy had disappeared. He came to a jerking rolling stop with his cab door level with where Bo was standing as if it was the hardest he’d ever been tackled by in his life. “Bo, you all right?” McIntyre asked even as he assessed that he was. McIntyre was more concerned with saving Bo’s life than burning coyotes so, he said sternly, “Don’t be stupid, let’s use what we brought with us,” pointing with his thumb over his back into the bed of the truck where the incendiaries lay. Bo nodded in agreement. “Now let’s get in the truck and go up into the tree line and do some real damage. You drive.” He said in a vain attempt to appease the boy. Bo could still manage no words, but shook his head emphatically. “Look you just took a good hard knock, you drive a little, then when you’ve caught your breath we change, ok?” Without waiting for an answer he pushed Bo into the cab then braced himself for the rocky ride to the treeline. McIntyre wasn’t so much worried about the bouncing, but the risk. He had sequestered Bo to the relative safety of the cab, but now they were going into the tree line, where “The real damage could be done” and where the real risk was.

Bo must have got his senses back, because drove up to the tree line, turned a sharp 180 and backed the bed up between some fluffy green trees. When the truck bed stopped rocking McIntyre set the leafy trees ablaze and Bo yanked the truck out of there before he could get singed. A few hundred yards north they repeated the action. The fires are catching real good McIntyre thought as he heard the pounding of Bo’s fist against the rear window of the cab, signaling that the boy wanted a change of drivers. McIntyre who had only agreed to this suicide mission in order to protect the boy had no intention of doing. It was a good thing for Bo Johnson that he didn’t.

McIntyre was right, the fire was catching, it was catching real good. By now the flames were raging as high as the ones that Gannon had set. The two sets of fires had joined and now a wall of flames was set to ring the entire western side of the township. But in the excitement and confusion they had ignored John Machado’s advice and gone in a predictable linear pattern and now the coyotes were showing up. “Dam, won’t they ever burn out McIntyre wondered to himself as he bounded against the hard corners and surfaces of the truck bed. Bo had the pedal floored and McIntyre had just come down hard on both elbows and knees, but what else he heard in the truck bed made him lose his pain instantly. It was coyotes clawing their way into the truck, their claws scratching against the metal like nails on a chalkboard. Then he felt something from on top of him pulling at his left shoulder, but before his reflex to pull away took over the coyote ripped his shoulder breaking his collarbone in the process. He could feel the bones crunching as if it were in someone else's body. Before the pain really set in, the coyotes swam into the truck covering him like a swarm of ants and ate him down to the bone. The question he asked himself was answered.

As he guided rather than drove away Bo Johnson had barly realized what was happening in the back before it was over. The truck was getting close to the paved road now, but Bo knew he had no chance of getting away. The coyotes had busted in the rear window and were clawing their way into the cab now. Without hesitation, Bo slowed the bouncing vehicle down just enough to turn it 180 degrees without flipping over, and just barely at that and drove straight back toward the flames. Bo decided that it was better to roast alive than die at the teeth of the beasts.  They must have read my mind was what Bo thought because just as soon as he had floored it back to the fire, the coyotes jumped off and disappeared. He was surprised, they still have time to get me he thought, but he was in no mood to look a gift horse in the mouth. If the good Lord saw fit to make those coyotes split who was he to question it. As he approached the flames he could see that it was no longer a wall of flames, it was barley a hedge row of fire. The flames didn't even come up to the windows of the truck and they were so thin that he drove right through them to the chard and burnt landscape on the opposite side. Bo stopped the truck then was awestruck with a feeling that he never thought he'd live to feel again, that he was safe. He was safe though, they would all be safe, the ones who survived the fire, it was just as John Machado had planed. Bo had to force the door open with sound of metal squealing as he got out and felt his feet crunching on the smoldering ground. He peered into the truck bed and seeing the bloodstained truck bed thought, that was a horrible way to die.

John Machado knew that Bo was in the clear. It was just that strange certain sense that had always come to him. He was less certain about himself. He had already rigged his house with incendiaries that burn rather than explode and destroy his parents home and the only house he had ever lived in. He was only sad for a few minutes and now he had strapped a the tank of a flamethrower on his back, loaded his Harley with incendiaries he intended to set off up in the woods and driven across the grassy plain up to where the valley sloped up into the dense green growth of the north Georgia mountains. In some years there is even snow up there, but this day in May there is only heat and the burning forest going up in a wall of black smoke to his south and coming down in black snow around him. The woods were angry, he could sense that too. He could also sense that they were onto him about it. As he scanned the hills every tree, every pine, every bush roiled back and forth like a shaking fist. Then he shielded his ears against the din of what screamed like a thousand jet engines revving up for takeoff all at once. The air was hot, like that from a flash fire and the force of it nearly toppled him from his bike. He dropped his left foot and swung his right leg smoothly over the bike keeping his hands pinned to his ears in the process. I'll never set these he thought correctly. Then he looked back up in the direction of the ear splitting turbulence and what he saw there made him forget all about holding his ears. The entire forest of trees was morphing into coyotes and swarming down upon him. With the tank still attached he took a few steps toward the descending hoards, but it was as if he were walking into a hurricane. He dare not fire the flamethrower in that direction. All that was left him was to beat a light speed retreat back to the cellar of his house, the only ting remaining of it. Machado chastised himself severely but rapidly. He had planned to set the northern rim of the woods ablaze all along, then return to hold up in his cellar, but now he could see that this was a wasted trip and a terrible chance he had taken with no opportunity of reward. He was forced to pick up his bike which had blown over in heated blasting wind. He lifted the bike as though it were weightless, fear being a powerful motivator. He could feel, but not hear the engine rev up to full speed, the roaring wind held dominion over all sound.

The grass was smooth, almost as smooth as pavement and John was able to bring his Hogg up to full speed which was over 120 miles per hour. The coyotes were pacing rather than overtaking him. They had something terrible in store for him he knew, but he had something for them too, if he could just get back to his basement in time.

January 9

There it was, his cellar, just ahead. There were coyotes approaching from the other direction. He slowed his bike, 110, 100, 80. The coyotes did not want to finish him off fast, they wanted to take it slowly, he couldn't know if he was reading their thoughts or if they told him so. He hoped they could not read his own. 60, 50, 40, the coyotes on the far side of his house held up about 500 yards back, they intended to trap him like a rat into a hole. At 30 miles per hour John Machado relaxed and stood up on his bike like a jockey in his saddle at the finish line of a race. There was no panic in him, he would strain when it was time to. At 20 he pulled on the wand of the flamethrower with his left hand to bring it up to ready. The wind was swirling now, hot with ash wiping like snow. At 10 miles per hour John Machado jumped off his bike, which he never saw roll lazily over onto the ground. Now was when he sprang, making for his cellar door at full gallop. One coyote took a perfunctory bite at him at he roasted it instantly using his flame thrower, it made a zapping sound like a moth in an electric bug trap. As he approached the door he noticed something, nothing he could put a finger on, but something was wrong. They got something for me he thought, I got something for them too. He put his back to the door and shot 180 degrees from right to left, then from left to right, the flames making a long arching blast that incinerated hundreds of coyotes who had gotten to close. John reconed that he had enough fuel for one or two more of those, then he would have to refuel. That was no problem now because he had plenty of fuel down below. I got something for them. He pushed the door with his back, backed in and slammed it shut behind as much as he could slam such a piece of steel. It was dark darker than normal. Only the pilot light from the flamethrower lit the room. What's wrong. There was no logical reason for John Machado to doubt his safety right now, but Jonh Machado, did not obey the rules of logic, he listened to the unknown connection of his mind to the outer world. They got something for me. Then John Machado knew exactly what was wrong. He used the rest of the fuel in his tank on the cellar in which he stood. He heard the coyotes squealing and hissing and he gagged on the smoke of their incineration. He stood upright against the door until something that felt like a truck slammed into it, and he sprawled onto the slowly burning floor gasping for air that he had already burnt up. He lay face down bleeding from somewhere above his eye brows. He coughed a few times then rolled to his side facing the door as he felt the concussion of another truck slamming into it. It was visibly bent. He coughed a few more times feeling more light headed each second. He had enough time to consider his circumstances. There was another slamming into the door, it bent some more and he could hear concrete crumble and drop to the floor from the hinges. There was plenty of flamethrower fuel and other incendiaries down here to start a forest fire of epic proportions, certainly enough to finish off the last of the vegetable coyotes. The only reason that his cellar was not ablaze and him with it was because the lack of oxygen would allow only a low blue burn in the room. But that door would only hold out for so long and not long at that. It was the perfect back draft set up. He chuckled painfully when he realized this. Either they would break through and he and the whole of Gwinnett Township would be roasted in the back draft. Or they would rip his carcass apart. The only thought that comforted him now was the feel of the nine millimeter in his hand that he'd brought along as he always had, just in case.

Elsie Pickens

David Mayberry

Testing testing 123

Barry Jensen

Bo Johnson

John Machado

Barry Jensen

Arkaquah

http://www.lifesmith.com/comnames.html

http://www.lifesmith.com/comnames.html

http://www.virtualwall.org/dm/0m.htm

http://www.snowwowl.com/swolfNAnamesandmeanings2.html