John Dermot Woods

PACK HUNTERS

THEY WAITED, STARING INTO THE blank screen of a wooded night. The minutes went by and the sounds accumulated: rustling, padding, tearing, breathing. Together, they listened to the chorus of the swarm. When the grunts subsided, Marjorie remained still in the back seat, attentive to the silence. She pressed her head against the cold window. As her years wore on, this frenzy had become her singular solace. She envied these creatures, the communion they experienced when they fed on the flesh she served them. They existed in packs; unlike her, they were never alone.

“Okay,” she said. “We can go back now.”

✦

Half drunk, Marjorie worked in her kitchen. She was toying with a new winter squash quick bread recipe—a task she’d usually leave to her editors. After forty years of running the show—even with a major media corporation to call her own—she still liked to get her fingers sticky on the odd Tuesday evening. She’d had an insight: spelt flour might be the key. She’d ended up baking straight through dinnertime, a vodka soda and a handful of peanuts all the sustenance she needed. But now she’d screwed around enough. She’d pass this one off to her test kitchen. It had gotten dark outside, time to go hunting.

She stepped into the rear of the Jeep idling in her driveway and yanked the flat metal door shut. Tristan, in his trim black polo, sat behind the wheel, eyes forward. He’d been driving Marjorie for almost five years, and they no longer needed many words. She checked his waist for the sheathed lump of steel. She couldn’t imagine when he’d ever use it, but its presence was a mercy. In the passenger seat was the new kid—what-was-his-name—Lune or Crew or Lace or Vice—some monosyllable of aborted nomenclature. He was still wearing a black suit—no doubt purchased for a bouncer gig at some strip-mall club closer to the city—a uniform she’d never required. She’d need to have a word with him about subtlety. Personal security who looked like mafia hitmen didn’t make for sympathetic paparazzi shots.

“Evening, ma’am.” He put up his elbow and turned to her. “It’s mild out tonight. Humidity burned right off.”

The kid was a talker. She wasn’t sure he was going to stick. But Tristan seemed okay with him.

“Yes,” she said. “The night is dry.”

Marjorie smelled cigarettes. Tristan wouldn’t have allowed the kid to smoke in the car. Still, he’d been outside of her house, flicking his ashes, hiding his spent butts in her flower beds, saturating the synthetic threads of his big suit with a miasma of tar and nicotine, and he’d brought it all into this claustrophobic environment. There could be no more smoking on the job. But Marjorie was too tired to address the issue. The men had waited patiently, and she thought such an ultimatum was better delivered by another of her employees, like Cynthia, the grounds manager, or Tristan himself.

Tristan shifted the car into drive. “Ready, Ms. Duncan?”

“Please.”

The black Wrangler rolled out the front drive, but rather than head toward the lights of town, it retreated behind the house, into the densely forested backyard that ranged for dozens of acres. It was a cloudy night and beyond the residual glow of Marjorie’s residence, the field of trees resembled undulations of desert sand. The dirt roads that interlaced her wooded acres were lost in the shadows.

The Jeep’s headlights projected a pocket of vision for just a few hundred yards. Tristan touched neither brake nor gas and let the vehicle cruise into the wooded depths of Marjorie’s claim. She moved into the middle of the rear seat and inched toward its edge, propping an elbow on each front seat. The kid grinned back at her, eyes wide in mock excitement. She trained her focus through the windshield, just beyond the Jeep’s nose, a tunnel of repeating trees and the dimpled surface of a dirt road consumed by their bumper. It was all the same.

“You guys see anything?” she asked.

The kid squinted. “It’s hard to say if there’s anything—”

“Not yet.” Tristan gave her the answer she wanted.

“Kill the lights, Tristan.”

“Ma’am?”

“Cut the headlights, please.” She patted his shoulder. “Just work with me here.”

Tristan stopped the car and did as she asked.

“Sit for a second,” she said. “Let your eyes adjust. You can see more than you think you can. Headlights just cast illusions.”

But the night was darker than she imagined. There was no moon, and the trees and clouds blocked the corona of light emanating from downtown. It was as dark as the night three decades earlier when she’d taken her daughter to a motel by a lake upstate. They were in retreat from a divorce, but Aster couldn’t have known. Marjorie promised to take her frog hunting by the water at night when, Marjorie imagined, amphibians came out to play. Aster ended up in sludge to her knees and they never heard a single croak. When they returned to the motel, the child saw that her chambray smock had been hopelessly stained. She demanded that they return to the city.

And Marjorie took her right home, driving down the New York State Thruway in the dead of the night, tuned in steadily to WQXR, the soothing sounds of overnight classical radio programming. She had always protected her daughter from the grime of life, pulling her closer during those moments of vulnerability and change. Since Aster’s birth, she’d been determined to shield her daughter’s eyes from the cruelty performed before them every day. So why had Aster, as an adult herself, rejected Marjorie so completely?

Marjorie’s own mother, single by way of premature widowhood, had never offered her the same protection. She couldn’t. They were too damn poor for luxuries like sheltered youth. Her mother had encouraged her to take modeling gigs at fifteen “if college is what you really want.” She’d told her to marry James—the one before Aster’s father—an apprentice investment banker who’d robbed Marjorie from her coed cradle.

“You gotta go north of south,” her mother had said. In this case “south” meant South Jersey. Her mother had ended up there after a decade and two failed marriages in Philadelphia, and she’d come to see those towns just off the low-numbered exits of the New Jersey Turnpike as cemeteries for ambition and happiness. Marjorie had never felt the same way, but she left all the same—because her mother told her to.

Once Marjorie had left, her mother had given her the gift of estrangement, a gentle separation marked by irregular birthday cards—more to Aster than to Marjorie—and the cashing of the checks Marjorie sent her on most holidays. Marjorie was happy to let her mother retreat from her life, but she insisted she would never run from Aster, however much the girl could’ve used the space.

Marjorie didn’t know how to relent, even when it was the right thing to do, whether it involved her daughter or this hunt for the creatures roaming her back acres. She hadn’t found what she was looking for, so she couldn’t stop.

“They’ll never come out with headlights spooking them.” She patted Tristan’s shoulder. “Keep rolling.”

Tristan let the Jeep creep forward. He followed the path’s turns—ones he’d practiced for years—and grooved the machine through the forest. Beside him, the kid plastered himself to his seat and tugged at his seatbelt to make sure it was locked. In the dashboard’s aura, Marjorie recognized embarrassed terror on his face. Hilarious. This was worth the risk of driving in the dark.

The turns in the road became knots, and Marjorie watched the path’s margins, where dirt met flora. That’s where she’d find what she wanted.

Ten more dark, silent minutes and she caught a glint, an iridescent glow up ahead, yellower than any fairy light she’d chased as a child. She placed a hand on Tristan’s shoulder and whispered, “Easy on that brake, just as slow as you can…”

The glow persisted and the Jeep surrendered. Tristan scanned the obscured wilderness before them. The kid had shut his eyes tight.

Tristan shifted the Jeep into park and reached to his waist, snapping open the holster with two fingers.

Marjorie put her hand on top of his. “Not tonight,” she said. “Let’s just watch.”

The glow began to move, approaching the purring automobile. The iridescence revealed itself as an eyeball, reflecting some errant strain of moonlight. The eye was joined by another, and from beneath it emerged a snout. The face surged forward, within a foot of the windshield. Four thin but muscled legs were planted firmly on the hood.

“Shit,” the kid said, peeking out of his left eye. “It looks like my stepdad’s dead dog.”

Tristan’s forearms tensed, his hand reaching for the wheel, then the holster, but grasping neither. He was paid to act.

“It’s okay.” Marjorie squeezed his shoulder. “Just watch. Don’t let him go.” She leaned between the two men and found two sets of eyes on the other side of the glass. One was the green of sea brine, the other the glowing green of road work signs. She looked into one pair and then the other, and they both looked back into hers. Marjorie’s hunt had been a success.

✦

Marjorie rinsed a martini glass with dry vermouth and pulled a frosty bottle of Grey Goose from the freezer drawer. It was a cool night and she left the kitchen door open to the yard. She could hear the kid talking to Tristan out back.

“Did you see that shit on the news? A guy’s dog got attacked by one of them. Over in Cedarbrook. A Pekingese. Little guy lost a fucking ear.”

“I don’t know dog breeds,” Tristan said.

Good man, Marjorie thought. Fuck canine eugenics.

“It was on the news, bro. On that lady’s show. You know, the hot one. She’s old but still hot.”

“Lydia Lawson,” Marjorie told the refrigerator.

“I’m just saying,” the kid said, “I don’t know if we should be encouraging these midnight drives. I heard if one of them bites you, and they draw blood, it… changes you.”

She heard Tristan sweeping. When moments were slow, he didn’t indulge in paranoid speculation, he kept things tidy. “Can’t say it’s our choice to encourage or not. I’m paid to drive. You’re paid to… protect.”

That’s right. Marjorie plopped three olives into the glass. Vodka spotted the counter. She pulled a cloth from a cabinet—her own name printed on the tag—and wiped the surface clean. She decided to take her drink out back.

“Lydia Lawson is a sensational fraud.”

The kid’s head snapped up. Tristan didn’t turn to her, but she saw his eyes widen: he was enjoying this.

“I had no idea.” The kid tried to fix his tie, but his collar was open. He had nowhere to center the knot. “I like watching her bits. Like the time she went to the Chinese restaurant, the one down on Post, and ordered shrimp lo mein, while her cameras snuck back in the kitchen and filmed rats playing in the pantry. The owner had nothing to say for himself. I couldn’t fucking believe it. You know how many times I’ve bought the lunch special there? General Tso’s and a Dr Pepper.”

Marjorie had never eaten anything prepared in General Tso’s style. “The owner had nothing to say because he doesn’t speak English.”

“Maybe true.”

“Maybe?” She looked the kid up and down: architectural facial hair to reflect the landscaped edges of his inorganically precise hairline. “So you admire this woman because she publicly humiliated one of the few immigrant businesses in this racist hamlet?” She peeked at Tristan who continued to sweep stray leaves off the patio. As a child, he’d emigrated from the West Indies, but he certainly didn’t live in this town, at least not on his off days.

“That’s not it,” the kid insisted. “There’s other stuff. Like the time Lydia Lawson caught the crossing guard sleeping on the job. Literally asleep. It was on camera.”

“What color was this crossing guard’s skin?” Marjorie asked.

“I don’t know. Spanish?”

“Are we seeing a pattern here?”

“Lydia Lawson did a piece about Ms. Duncan.” Tristan had his back to them.

“Are you defending this woman’s bigotry, Tristan?” Marjorie tugged his shoulder and brought him around to face them.

“No. Just informing young Jace.”

Jace! The kid was called Jace.

“In fact, it wasn’t just one story,” Tristan continued. “Ms. Duncan is a favorite of Lydia Lawson: her dustup with the zoning board over the lake she tried to dig on the rear of the property, her violation of air and noise rights with her installation of the helipad, her regular run-ins with animal control. What Lydia Lawson can never grasp is what an advocate of the people—no matter race or creed—our dear employer is.”

Marjorie watched Jace absorb Tristan’s insolence. She sipped her martini and waited for his response.

“I dunno about all that.” Jace looked at Tristan, but he’d already turned away and was surveying the dark yard. “I’m just saying that puppy didn’t deserve to lose an ear.”

“Maybe it’s a vicious, little bitch. You don’t know, Jace.” She tipped back the rest of her drink. It was too late in the night to savor it. “Besides, the story is a fabrication. Those creatures descended from the hills almost two decades ago and haven’t upset a damn thing besides a trash can. Why would they start eating the ears off of lapdogs?”

✦

Cheyenne Williams had been working this rural postal route for almost three months. She preferred it to her old territory back in town. Most of this run was in the truck, up and down the drives of private estates. These people didn’t go to stores, so there were a lot of packages to deliver. Usually there was a lockbox or even a manned gatehouse where she could make an easy drop. Now that it was autumn, the days were getting shorter, and she was learning to navigate these wooded roads in the dark at the end of her shift.

This particular Wednesday evening, she finished her route with a delivery to Marjorie Duncan’s estate, as she often did. Duncan lived at the top of Ridgeline. It was early October and the first chill of fall was still novel enough that it made Cheyenne feel alive. She cracked her window as she approached Duncan’s gate. That evening she had a haul for the renowned media magnate: a vacuum cleaner, a stack of brooms, mops, and what appeared to be buckets. She wondered if Duncan would ever touch any of this stuff. Surely, she had a full-time cleaning staff. But Cheyenne had read once—on one of those clickbait sites—that Marjorie Duncan was legendarily OCD. She threw out her sheets once a week and kept a nurse on call to treat her hands, which bled constantly from scrubbing with dish soap and a wire brush. Maybe these products were for her personal stash.

There was often an older guy who met her at the gate: shaved head, neat clothes, fit for a guy half his age. He didn’t say much but was always polite, and she could detect the islands in his few words. Cheyenne had considered asking him to get a drink over in Rockton—where she lived and she assumed he did too, when he wasn’t sleeping in Marjorie Duncan’s maids’ quarters—but he looked like he might not drink, and who knew how a notorious old bitch like Duncan might react if you talked to her help.

It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t at the gate when she pulled up that Wednesday evening. She pulled the packages out of the truck and ran her fingers on the side of the entrance, feeling for the digital keypad. Her delivery didn’t register as complete until she got the package inside the fence. She found the pad, but when she tapped it, it remained dark. The backlight must have burned out.

“Shit.” She groped for her phone to cast a glow on the numbers.

And that’s when she heard a squish beneath her boot. She’d stepped in something moist.

“Gross.” She’d ditched the in-town route expressly so she’d no longer have to step in dog shit.

She squatted down to sniff and detected no acrid scent of canine feces. There was something subtler, something organic but not vegetal. She found her phone and pulled it out of her jacket. Its dull glow projected on the ground and she saw what looked like a ribeye steak. Two, in fact. Did Marjorie Duncan line the path to her home with fine cuts of beef?

She reached for the steak, just to touch it—she was curious as to whether it was cooked—and that’s when an unthinkable pain, radiating from her hand directly to her consciousness, took her down. A sinewy jaw plunged its teeth into her left hand and held on as the blackness of the night flooded her being.

By morning, a news van sat where Cheyenne Williams’s postal truck had been, and Lydia Lawson held her finger on Marjorie Duncan’s call button, cameras rolling. Lawson wanted answers, an explanation for the tragedy that had befallen an innocent postal worker on this very spot.

✦

“It’s not like she died.” Marjorie sat in the back of the Jeep as they trolled her back acres, this time with headlights on, high beams on full. “A few stitches and she’s as good as new. These people have already relegated these beasts to the hills. Now they’re just looking for more reasons to criminalize their existence.”

Tristan drove and Jace sat shotgun, a stack of shrink-wrapped Styrofoam trays on his lap. He prodded the plastic with two fingers and scanned the edge of the field cast by the Jeep’s headlights. They’d been at it for two hours without seeing so much as a twitch on the fringe. He could feel his employer getting restless.

“We might need to offer some bait,” she said.

Tristan cleared his throat, as close to a protest as he’d issue. He peeked into the rearview and Jace saw the hesitation.

“Yes, Tristan?” Marjorie slid forward. “Do you have reservations you’d like to share?”

Tristan shook his head.

“Look. We’ll toss the beef at the rear of the property, leagues from the delivery route of our unfortunate mail carrier—or any human foot traffic.”

“We always do.” Tristan slowed the Jeep and surveyed the tree line.

“What are the chances,” Marjorie asked, “that another wild animal picks up a raw steak and just drops it on the ground?”

Jace inspected the cuts piled on his lap. “I sure as hell wouldn’t leave any of these behind.”

“See?” She squeezed his shoulder. “This is why I keep a savage on the payroll.”

Jace pulled a utility knife from his breast pocket and scored the shrink-wrap on the top of the stack.

“Filet mignon medallions from Stuckey’s Ranch in New Mexico,” Marjorie said. “It’s what we served at Aster’s wedding.”

“I’m guessing nobody opted for the chicken that night?”

Marjorie stared at the side of Jace’s face, his left jaw, the half of his aspect left in shadow. His mouth kept working even though he was no longer speaking. He brimmed with apprehension—and innocence. She admired it. “The whole affair was filthy with asshole vegetarians… and vegans.”

“Pearls before swine.” Jace let a steak dangle alluringly from his thumb and forefinger.

Marjorie liked this kid more every day. “No matter. Aster chucked the groom after six months. We should’ve realized there were problems when he had to be dragged from the bathroom to the chuppah in time for the vows and poor Aster had to use her great-grandmother’s kerchief—the one I’d given her that morning—to wipe his nose clean before he turned to the rabbi.”

Tristan stopped the Jeep at the edge of a small clearing, just big enough to plant a kitchen garden following the specs outlined in the latest issue of Marjorie’s magazine. All remained still.

“Okay,” Marjorie whispered. “Start casting meat.”

Again, Tristan cleared his throat.

“For the love of Christ, Tristan. That woman’s medical bills are paid—and then some.” Marjorie grabbed the back of his seat. “And besides, we know she was antagonizing the poor thing. These creatures aren’t about to take a bite out of her skinny flesh when there’s a raw steak lying right there.”

Jace opened the door and stepped before the Jeep, the headlights on his back, throwing his shadow forward. He released the filets from their packages and tossed them around the clearing, little frisbees of beef. He surveyed his work and rejoined them inside the Jeep’s cabin.

They sat and waited barely a minute.

“Turn off the lights. They’ve been spooked. They won’t come out if they know we’re watching.”

Tristan tapped a button, and the whole woods went dark.

Marjorie rolled down her window a few inches. “Kill the engine.”

Eyes appeared among the trees.

“Okay, gentlemen”—Marjorie dug her nails into the leather seats—“let them come.”

✦

Lydia Lawson’s producers had been calling all morning. Marjorie directed her assistant and office manager to block every call that came in. Still, her phone kept ringing.

The day was unusually warm, so Marjorie asked her Pilates instructor to meet her on the rear veranda. She thought an outdoor workout might be nice, but a police helicopter hovered over the grounds, tracing a nauseating figure eight in the sky.

“What’d you do this time?” Mina had been her instructor for fifteen years. She could ask this question. “Fuck some kid in the Mickey Mouse Club? Inadvertently profile a white supremacist in your lifestyles section?”

“I did nothing. This isn’t about me. Not really.” Marjorie slammed open the reformer, a clunky and overengineered device Mina used to stretch and tone her clients’ bodies. “This is all because a dog died. Some bullshit Maltese got ripped apart by the local wildlife and this is the town’s response. Might as well invoke habeas corpus.”

“This is about a lapdog?”

“These assholes adore their tiny canines. Genetically engineered freaks. It’s immoral that dogs like that even exist.”

“Who are the cops looking for?”

“The guilty parties, of course.”

“Why?”

“So they can kill them.”

“Jesus Christ.” Mina adjusted the reformer. “You live in a dire little village, Marjorie.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let them exact their petty revenge.”

Mina lifted Marjorie’s arms, ropes of muscle resembling the biceps of a professional athlete, and began to stretch her out. “Let’s get started.”

Marjorie pushed up her forearms, while Mina pushed them down, creating productive resistance.

“Listen, Marjorie. I heard from Aster. She wants to start doing sessions again.”

Marjorie stopped pushing. “Are you asking for my permission?”

“No,” she said. “I just thought you’d like to know that I spoke with her. She seemed okay. Healthy even.”

“Did she have a message to share, some bit of spite she asked you to relate?”

“No.” Mina made a show of shaking her head. “Not at all. She didn’t even mention you. I just…”

Marjorie picked up a towel and held it to her face, still dry. Mina turned her by her shoulders and kneaded the permanent knot at the base of her neck.

The phone, her private line, began to ring back inside the house. Marjorie shook Mina off her back. She dropped the towel. “Not today, Mina. I’ve got shit to do.” She walked back toward the house. “I’ve gotta save this damn town from itself.”

As she stepped inside, Mina heard her shout, “Fuck you, Lydia Lawson!”

What a strange thing to say.

✦

Jace watched the evening news in the utility room, settled upon a stack of dirty pool towels that had been waiting for the laundry since Labor Day. When he heard steps coming, he scrambled for the remote. It might be Marjorie, and he’d learned better than to let her catch him watching Lydia Lawson. But he couldn’t find the damn thing. It must have fallen among the collapsed patio furniture stashed behind him. He was rooting through the stacks when Marjorie stepped inside. She scanned the room, cement floor and fluorescent lights. She’d walked by this room before, but she’d never been inside of it.

“Leave it on,” she said. “Keep her on the screen where I can see her.”

Lydia Lawson was reporting from an apartment complex in Rockton, one of those places built in the nineties, acres of attached two-level structures, little more than glue and plywood, arranged in concentric arrays of contrived cul-de-sacs. The graphic at the top of the screen claimed that the feed was live, promising viewers a calamity in progress.

Marjorie leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “What paranoia is she sowing among the townsfolk today?”

Jace straightened his shirt as he stood back up. “They’re closing in on the one who killed the puppy.”

“How do they know which one it is?”

“They have distinguishing marks. They’re not all identical.”

“I know that.”

“He’s got a white blaze down his snout. Looks like an arrow. They showed it. Pretty sick blaze.”

“They got a photograph of this ‘sick’ blaze?”

“No, it was a drawing.”

“An artist’s rendering of the dangerous suspect.”

“Pretty much.”

On screen, Lydia Lawson signaled for her crew to follow her into the fray as she walked backwards, mic to mouth. She’d ditched her blouse and skirt for this mission and, instead, donned a safari shirt and nylon pants. She was ready for adventure. At the bottom of one cul-de-sac, abutting a wooded area, a crew of police, their riot gear dusted off, gathered around a barrier of blue sawhorses.

“The animal has been positively identified and contained to the rear of the street,” Lydia Lawson delivered in her well-practiced stage whisper, “but they have yet to secure it.”

Marjorie stepped out of the utility room. “Tristan! Get the car!”

✦

Even in the sedan, Marjorie rode in the rear, conceding shotgun to Jace. Tristan said he could get them to the far side of Rockton in twenty minutes. But Marjorie realized that she didn’t know where they were going. Rockton was full of shitty apartment complexes and she couldn’t distinguish one from the next.

She leaned forward. “How’re we going to find this place?”

“It’s Archer’s Grove,” Jace said. “One of my bros—kid I don’t talk to anymore—he fucked my—hooked up with my girl in high school—lived there. Probably still does. With his mom. I practically grew up in Archer’s. Riding bikes, throwing rocks in the woods, shit like that.”

“Sordid.” Marjorie lay back on the leather seat. When she heard Jace describe it, she realized she didn’t grow up very differently down in South Jersey. And it wasn’t a bad way to grow up. “Tell Tristan where to steer us.”

Tristan didn’t need directions. Rockton was the only place he’d lived since he was fourteen, when he’d left his grandparents’ farm on Saint Vincent to live with his mother. He’d spent many days and nights within the confines of Archer’s Grove.

He blew right by the wooden billboard that welcomed the public to the Archer’s Grove subdivision, engraved letters painted gold, a rustic nod that fooled no one. Tristan guided them through a series of side streets until they found a service entrance. Since becoming Marjorie’s driver, he’d developed an instinct for finding service entrances and other back doors. And, as with most service entrances, the gate was raised when they rolled up.

Before entering Archer’s Grove, Tristan stopped the car. “Are you sure, Ms. Duncan?”

“Sure?”

“Will your presence help the situation? Considering the cameras? Considering the mail carrier?”

“We’re just here to observe, Tristan. I’m not even going to get out of the car.”

Tristan guided them to the precise block where the tension had arisen. He parked the car in such a way that Marjorie could observe the action through the windshield. They were a few hundred yards away, but she could follow the movement of the crowd. Lydia Lawson had stopped broadcasting and was conferring with a producer at her news van’s tailgate. Several cops had their service weapons drawn but appeared to hold their position. Beyond the sawhorse perimeter, families were milling, kids bouncing on little bicycles, Solo cups of beer passed hand to hand, the kind of warmth Marjorie had felt in the suburbs of her youth. And somewhere, tucked amid the fray, was a frightened and isolated animal, separated from its pack, his only security in a hateful world, accused of a crime he couldn’t understand as anything but a natural act.

A couple of cops fell out of the perimeter and signaled for the gathered neighbors to back away. Lydia Lawson ran over to one of the officers who laughed at whatever she said. Lydia Lawson, friend of the working man. He pointed her to a nearby curb where she and her cameraman took position. The rest of the police spread their perimeter. Now they all had guns drawn and trained forward. And, when they spread, Marjorie caught a vivid glimpse of their prey: cowering, confused, a white arrow distinct on its snout. It was all alone and no creature, she thought, however marginal, should be left to fend for itself. One officer raised a hand and they all moved forward, one boot placed softly in front of the other.

That’s when Marjorie made a break for it. Before Tristan could stop her, before Jace even registered what was happening, she had flung the door open and was sprinting straight toward the cops’ backs. She might be seventy years old, but she moved with the quickness of the beast she was hellbent on saving.

The police broke ranks. Some even waved pistols in her direction. Jace chased after her until Tristan grabbed the back of his jacket. It was best not to make it obvious that a scion of bourgeois domesticity employed armed security.

“Go!” Marjorie screamed. “Get the hell away from these maniacs!”

The cops looked at each other. Then they looked at the crowd. The neighbors looked at their kids who looked back at them for an explanation. Their parents looked back at the cops who would’ve been happy if the children could have explained what was happening.

But Lydia Lawson saw it all and her cameraman recorded it. What was happening was Marjorie Duncan: local resident, lifestyle icon, rumored agoraphobe, megalomaniac, and probable sociopath. She was a woman so deluded that she couldn’t understand how the safety of her neighbors might come before her infatuation with some sickly beasts who had descended into their village at the cresting edge of the metropolis’s sprawl.

After the cops had assessed Marjorie’s lack of threat, they returned to their target, who had used the celebrity’s diversion to disappear into a more comfortable habitat.

Under the cover of Tristan’s arm, Marjorie was taken back to her car, before the law or the public devised a way to charge her with a crime at the scene of her outburst. As Tristan reversed the car out of the cul-de-sac, Marjorie surveyed the scene she was leaving behind: pissed-off cops, giddy children, their aroused, drunk parents, and one enormously satisfied TV broadcaster.

“Fuck Lydia Lawson,” she said, as Tristan shifted into drive and headed straight home.

✦

When people went out for walks, which they rarely did anymore, they were sure to protect themselves. They’d carry a baseball bat, a lacrosse stick, a small, concealed handgun, whatever charm they trusted to ward off danger. Community patrol groups had been organized and they took shifts staking out those spots in their subdivisions where developed property met a fringe of trees that they called “the woods.” And the police department’s one helicopter, leased with taxpayer dollars from a larger municipality, became a permanent fixture hanging in the air. More often than not, the helicopter’s spotlight traced an easy pattern over the wooded acres of Marjorie Duncan’s estate, as Ms. Duncan, the town and the nation agreed, was to blame for the fear that paralyzed and locked down their once-placid town.

Marjorie claimed, though, that she didn’t give a shit. However many millions of times people wanted to replay Lydia Lawson’s sensationalist segment on YouTube, the one that showed a rabid Marjorie practically assaulting her local police force, she refused to offer any kind of statement to any kind of public. Her publicity team was in fits, but Marjorie insisted that she didn’t “owe any mindless assholes shit.”

Things only got worse during her latest Pilates session, when Mina delivered the news: an old woman in the assisted living community on Civic Hill had been attacked while walking to her mailbox. She’d been put in the ICU at Saint Dominic’s and Lydia Lawson was keeping vigil outside the hospital, narrating the woman’s fight for her life.

Marjorie lay back on a foam mat and let Mina stretch her legs hard. “And I guess that they’re saying this woman’s life is my responsibility?”

“Lawson is letting America draw its own conclusion.”

“How old is this elderly woman anyway?”

“Seventy-two.” Mina pushed Marjorie’s knee to her chest. Marjorie didn’t strain in any way.

“Not even old enough to have been my babysitter. There’s no excuse for her to be such an invalid that she can’t scare off a cowering animal.”

“Well”—Mina pulled her to her feet—“we’re not all blessed with the same genes.”

“But some are.” Marjorie slowly reached her fingers to her toes. “Did my daughter ever find her way to your studio?”

“She did.” Mina stood behind her and raised her arms. “She came for a session.”

“And what did she say?” Marjorie strained to see Mina’s face over her shoulder.

“I think it’s best”—Mina pushed into the small of her back—“if you reached out to her yourself.”

Marjorie swung around and held Mina by her upper arms. “Mina. Do you think I haven’t tried that?” Her fingers dug into her trainer’s muscles.

Mina gasped, a fish with its head above water, mouth opening and closing, neither breathing nor speaking. Marjorie let her go. She turned back around waited. Several breaths passed between them, then Mina pushed her thumbs into Marjorie’s back and picked up where she left off.

“I suspect,” Marjorie said, “that this woman would’ve checked into Saint Dominic’s sooner rather than later. Why is a woman that young living in a nursing home—”

“Assisted living.”

“Old folks home. She treated herself like shit her whole life. She’s probably riddled with diabetes. And now she’s blaming her health on the chance appearance of a wild animal?”

Mina prepared the Pilates reformer. “I don’t know that we can assume—”

“Did you see the woman on the TV?” Marjorie stepped into the machine.

“Yes.”

“Then tell me the truth: Was she fat?”

✦

By the weekend, the woman was still in the hospital, and the nation prayed for her survival, inspired by regular, reverently whispered reports from the halls of Saint Dominic’s Medical Center, delivered from the painted lips of Lydia Lawson. This development in her story—the fact that the hubris of Marjorie Duncan had endangered the life of a defenseless old woman—had allowed Lydia Lawson to finally take the leap from the local to the national stage.

“What annoys me most,” Marjorie informed Jace, watching the news coverage over his shoulder in the utility room, “is that these reports fail to mention that she’s been moved out of the ICU. She’s stable. That woman is not going to die. And Lydia-fucking-Lawson knows it.”

Tristan joined them. “The cameras picked up movement back near the creek.” Tristan looked at the TV. A headshot of Marjorie floated behind the anchorman’s head. It was not the best—a full-on flash, over-the-shoulder paparazzi snapshot—but it was hard to make her look unpretty. “Are you sure you still want to go out tonight?”

“You said they’re out there?”

“It appears so. Right now.”

“Then we’re going.”

The woman from that assisted living community hadn’t been the only case. Some golfers had had a run-in. No one was hurt, but one leather golf bag was shredded, and its remains made for a pornographic reminder of what the creatures’ jaws might do to a human calf muscle or earlobe. Children claimed to have been chased as well. Parents pleaded to the cameras, “Our kids can’t play in their own yards,” as if this was the result of rabid animals and not video game systems, streaming entertainment, and high-fructose corn syrup. And, ultimately, there was another canine casualty: a yellow lab. And this time it was an actual puppy.

“It’s the damn puppies that cause all the hysteria.” Marjorie bounced in the Jeep’s back seat. “People lose all sense of reason when they see their little faces. One puppy is eliminated in the natural order of things, and these idiots are concerned that the local wildlife are mutant demon spawn rather than, you know, animals in the wild.”

“Did you see the puppy?” Jace was swiping through his phone.

“No. Let’s keep it that way.”

Jace tucked his phone into his jacket, beside his handgun. Marjorie slumped back in her seat. She reached for the door and poked a button to open the window. She just wanted to listen to the air rush by. But she heard something else beneath it. “Stop the car.”

Tristan eased the Jeep to a halt. They all listened.

There was a much more violent rush of air above them: a helicopter’s rotor producing air pockets and sonic pops. The local cops continued their vigilant watch of the town’s most famous resident. But they’d been flying lower, getting closer, emboldened by her public display of defiance.

“Ignore it. Continue, Tristan.”

The Jeep headed toward the creek and the helicopter faded behind them. The cops hadn’t detected the same activity that Tristan had seen on the cameras.

“Let’s hope they haven’t been spooked,” Tristan said.

“As long as they don’t start flashing the damn spotlight, I’m confident our friends will be there. If they’re coming out in these conditions at all, they must be starving.”

They arrived in the back corner of the property and the helicopter moved on, content to pursue its aerial harassment in some other part of town. It was dark and quiet where they sat, the only sound the rush of a creek. The conditions were ideal for an encounter. Tristan cut the headlights and they waited.

Neither Tristan nor Jace spoke. These carefully engineered silences were the culmination of Marjorie’s life’s work. She’d surrounded herself with people paid not to disturb her, not to expose her to company and stimuli she hadn’t specifically curated. And yet, when she looked at the seat beside her, she was aware that it was empty. There was only one person she’d have sit there, the least peaceful of presences, but her daughter had left her. Aster had been the only family Marjorie had ever needed. She could never get the girl to see things the same way. Now her sentence was to sit alone, two paid companions her only solace.

It wasn’t long before the creatures arrived. Within minutes, three sets of eyes glowed along the tree line. Maybe they’d learned to identify the vehicle as a source of sustenance. But Marjorie wasn’t interested in feeding them. She just wanted to watch them.

And they were watching her. The iridescent eyes held steady, their animal forms well hidden in the wilderness. They made no move to reveal themselves or retreat.

Marjorie saw that Jace had prepared the stack of Styrofoam trays on his lap. She pulled one off the top. Jace turned, ready to say something. Marjorie held a finger to her lips. With her other hand, she ran a fingernail along the shrink-wrap and pulled out a steak. She held it up for her security detail to observe. Watery blood leaked over her hand and down her forearm.

She reached for her door and cracked it open. Jace struggled to restrain himself. He’d been hired to keep this woman safe. The raw smell of the meat almost overwhelmed him. The animals would be salivating at its scent. Tristan kept his hands on the wheel and looked forward. He’d let Marjorie’s will follow its course. She opened the door and stepped outside. She’d never left the safety of the Jeep’s cabin before. Jace opened his door too. Tristan put a hand on his arm: Stay put.

Holding the steak before her, both as an offering and a shield. She approached the glowing eyes. None of them came forward. She waved the wet meat, and still they held their ground.

Killers of puppies and old ladies, she thought, yet they don’t even have the balls to come out for a slab of raw beef.

She took two steps closer. None of the eyes moved, but the air was so still, she could feel their tendons tightening, flight instincts kicking in.

And then the damn helicopter circled back. She heard its incessant buzzing getting louder. They couldn’t even give her twenty minutes of peace. She’d have to expedite matters.

She pitched the steak a few feet forward and retreated a couple of steps. She squatted down and remained still. Beseeching words of encouragement would not entice the creatures. They weren’t puppies. She held her ground and she saw them move. The first tentative steps. Faces emerged from the bushes. Then they stopped. The helicopter got louder. She didn’t dare turn to look for it, but it sounded like it was coming right for them.

She caught the eye of one animal and directed its gaze to the meat on the grass. “Go on,” she mouthed. And it did. All three of them did. The spinning rotors sent the grass blades into a frenzy, but the animals got bolder. And so did Marjorie.

They’d all exposed themselves. Marjorie had never been so close, so open, to these objects of her fascination. The one in front nosed the slab of beef.

And Marjorie pounced. Right before the animal took its first tentative bite, she swiped the steak. She could feel its breath on the back of her hand, and it was warm, warmer than a man’s.

Jace couldn’t hold himself any longer. If Marjorie was bitten, they might lose her to the hills forever. He stepped out of the Jeep, releasing his gun from its holster. “Ms. Duncan.”

But she could no longer hear him. The helicopter was not just close; it was above them. And its dark shadow was getting larger.

Marjorie held the steak above her head. “You want this?!” she screamed.

She looked up at the helicopter, the police too late to save the day. She looked at poor Jace, his gun waving around, unsure where he should put his bullets to bring about the ideal resolution. She looked at the purring Jeep, ready to deliver her from this vicious pack to her life of solitary confinement. She looked at the creatures, eyes trained on the dripping meat in her hand. They were hungry, just like her. The one standing in back leapt for her hand and Marjorie slapped the steak against its skull. The animal landed on its paws and all three of the misunderstood beasts stood at attention.

They surged forward and Marjorie did too. The helicopter projected daylight onto the clearing. Under its harsh revelation, the conflict had disappeared.

Tristan watched the scene. The animals had fled, the meat gone, Marjorie vanished. The kid Jace stumbled around in the spotlight, blinded. And above them, the chopper hovered low. He could read the words printed on its side. It wasn’t the police. It was a news helicopter. He thought he could see Lydia Lawson peering out the side. She’d gotten the whole scene on film.

Tristan tapped the windshield and signaled for Jace to get back in. They’d drive back to the house and wait for Ms. Duncan to come home. Or maybe she’d found a new home and, when the morning arrived, there’d be other calls to make.

JOHN DERMOT WOODS is a writer and cartoonist living in Brooklyn. His books include Mortals (Radix Media) and The Baltimore Atrocities (Coffee House). His comics and stories have appeared in The Believer, DIAGRAM,  The Indiana Review, and New York Magazine. He is a professor of creative writing at Nassau Community College.