Home for Christmas

(December 26, 2016)


7

Wendy broke out the Jeep. "Got enough gas?" Dipper asked as they piled in.

"Roger that, Dip," Wendy said. "Checked it out earlier today. We're good to go. Seatbelts!"

"Got it!" Mabel said from the back seat. "Punch it!"

Wendy didn't exactly do that, but they sped through the night faster than Dipper would have driven and maybe at nearly the same speed Mabel would have made. Grateful that Wendy knew pretty much every twist and turn of every alley, lane, road, street, road, and logging trail in the Valley, Dipper hung on.

"Goin' off-road in a second," Wendy said after twenty minutes of fast driving. "Hold onto your dinners!"

Then they started weaving like a broken-field runner, swinging wide around young trees, sometimes really wide and uphill to avoid a fallen trunk. They broke out of the lightly-forested terrain on the southern flank of the hill and then jolted on a tilting course westward, around the base. Cold air whistled in, making Dipper grateful for the layers of clothing, especially for the windproof hoodie and the balaclava.

"Wooo-hooo!" yelled Mabel. "Next summer you gotta let me drive the Jeep! And maybe after that—a tank!"

"That'll be the day!" Dipper yelled over his shoulder.

"Think we're as close as we need to get," Wendy said. "Hang on while I turn this sucker around. Want to be pointed the right way in case we need a quick getaway!" She parked the Jeep on relatively level grass and switched off the headlights. "Hang on a sec, Dip," she said.

He heard something jingling, and then she said, "Hold out your hand." He felt her take his wrist, and then she put something in his palm. "Put this in an inside pocket now. Don't lose it!"

"What is it?" he asked before holding the tip of a glove finger in his teeth and tugging the glove off. He got out of the Jeep and unzipped enough to stick the item into his jeans pocket.

"Spare key for the Jeep," Wendy said. "Just in case I—I'm not up to driving after."

His heart pounded hard, once. "If it's too dangerous—"

"Come on," Wendy said, putting an axe in his hands. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right?"

"Right!" Mabel said. "Charge! Uh—which way?"

"Follow me," Wendy said. "Eyes on!"

"Oh, yeah," Mabel muttered. "Forgot!"

Dipper had raided Ford's underground lab for three pairs of Fiddleford's improved night-vision goggles. He pulled his down, powered them on, and then re-gloved his hand.

Everything showed up in shades of green and black. Wendy's long red hair was blindingly bright. He followed it like a banner.

They were on the lowest slope of the hill opposite the town. When the ancient UFO had crashed hard, its shields had pulverized layers of ancient rock, blasting out a crater many times the craft's size. In the thirty million years since, layers of silt had filled in the very bottom of the crater, piles of semi-molten rock had solidified into the backbones of hills, and plants and animals had colonized the huge round Valley.

The spaceship had acquired deep layers of sod. It had become the prominent round hill near the Valley's center.

However, the angle of the crash meant that this far side of the hill was steeper than the one toward town. They still had some elevation—the range of the night-vision goggles seemed to be a hundred yards or a little more, and beyond the boundary of what they could see lay the darkness of forest and the far faint outline of bluffs and mountains.

Wendy stopped, and Dipper almost blundered into her. "Here. I thought I heard something far-off. Everybody quiet and listen!"

They stood in a triangular grouping, Wendy a step or two downslope, Dipper and Mabel flanking her. Though not as cold as it had been, the air was sharply chill in Dipper's nostrils when he rolled the balaclava up to uncover his ears. A wind out of the west rustled the long dry grass.

Something not awfully far off called out "Oo! Oo! Oo! Oo!" and Mabel grabbed Dipper's arm. "What is that?"

"Gray owl," Wendy said in a loud whisper. "Not that—there—hear that?"

Dipper did. The sound, right on the edge of hearing, was not howling, not barking, but something fierce and sharp and cold—the sound of a wolf pack close to its prey and gaining on it.

Wendy pointed with her axe. In the night-vision goggles, the implement shone like the full moon. "That way, maybe a mile off. Coming towards us. Zig-zagging. Whatever—"

"Whoa!" Mabel yelled as Dipper sucked in his breath. Beyond the boundary of the goggles' effectiveness, something like a meteor soared not down, but up, arching upwards from the forest, high above the trees and then coming down again somewhere in the dark woods. "What was that?"

"Don't know," Wendy said. "Not a flare signal. Not a bird."

The sounds of the pursuing wolves broke out, changed direction, and fell silent. Dipper heard only the dry whispers of the wind in the grass Something swooped across his line of vision, and he ducked involuntarily, but Wendy said, "There goes the owl, gettin' the hell out of Dodge."

"Are we going to charge right into them?" Mabel asked.

"Not unless we have to. Come on—if we're gonna meet 'em, it ought to be on level ground," Wendy said. They walked a short way, off the lowest slope of the hill, onto a meadow that, at the far side, gradually spiked up into saplings and then forest. "Mabel, get ready. If six of them come charging us, remember—never give an enemy a break. Smash 'em, cut 'em, make 'em run or send them to hell."

"I'm scared," Mabel admitted.

"We are, too," Dipper said. "But courage means being scared and standing up anyway."

"Got it—whoa! Is it coming to us?"

The leaping thing, whatever it was, had soared again, this time seemingly aiming for the clearing. "Maybe it can see us," Wendy said.

"Or smell us," Dipper added.

"Nope. We're downwind of it and the wolves, lucky for us. If they charge out, we'll have surprise on our side. Dip, did you get a good look at that thing?"

"No, just a bright silver blur."

The wolves yowled, closer now. "They're changing direction," Wendy said. "They're probably gonna come out of the forest over on the right."

Dipper fingered one of the grenades hanging from his belt. "When they show up, should I toss one?" he asked.

"Keep that in case we can't handle 'em," Wendy said. "Mabel, you stay close beside me. You watch out for my axe."

"Right."

"Whoa!" Dipper said. Again, and even closer, the soaring figure arched high overhead—and came streaking down on the slope behind them.

"I see it!" Mabel said. "Oh, my God, it's gone dark and collapsed!"

"We got other things to worry about!" Wendy said. "Eyes forward!"

Fifty yards away, out of the tree cover, unaware of the three humans ahead of them, the wolf pack broke through in furious hot pursuit.

Six of them. Charging blindly, headlong, looking not for humans but for whatever it was that leaped away from them.

Dipper raised his axe.