The three of them took out large hand-held flashlights, turned them on, and started walking out into the darkness. The moon was out, but the slim crescent did almost nothing to illuminate their path. The lights of the billboard and trailer both were soon swallowed up by the blackness of the night.

The knee-high grass of the Dry Lands rustled in passing as the three of them continued on. Walter and Cassie both looked out ahead, searching for the sick roan mare, Rachel happened to glance back toward the highway, and it was she who spotted the horse.

"Hey," Rachel turned back to where Cassie and her father were looking. "Is that the horse you're looking for?"

"Where?" Walter asked.

"There. Back by the road. Over by that pay phone," Rachel said.

Cassie and her father both turned to look in the direction that Rachel was pointing. Sure enough, there was a scruffy roan horse over by the pay phone on the other side of the highway. The horse was swaying from side to side as it walked, like it was either disoriented or badly injured.

Even as they watched, the horse ambled up to the vacant pay phone. That was when things took a turn for the weird, as the three of them were closing in on the horse, the horse picked up the telephone receiver in its mouth and dropped it to the ground, then it horse bent its head down to the ground and picked up a long twig. It started poking at the keypad with its twig, seeming almost to be dialing a number.

"Am I crazy, or is that horse trying to make a phone call?" Rachel asked.

"She must be disoriented," Walter shrugged. "Doesn't know what she's doing. C'mon, let's get over there."

Cassie slowed down, falling into step with Rachel.

"That horse is dialing the phone," Rachel whispered.

"Sure looks that way," Cassie whispered back.

"Maybe she's ordering a pizza?" Rachel fought to hold back a snicker.

"Hay, alfalfa, and extra cheese?" Cassie was also struggling to hold back laughter.

While the two girls were kidding around, Walter walking closer and closer to the injured horse. He was moving slowly, so as not to frighten the animal, but when the horse noticed him, she didn't seem to care about the effort. She hesitated, looked at the phone as though she wanted to complete her call, then abruptly decided to run away.

"Whoa, girl, easy does it," Walter said, in that high-pitched voice that he used for calming down frightened animals. "I'm just trying to help you."

Or, at least she tried to run; her body wasn't up to that kind of activity. The mare wobbled as she tried to walk, swaying away into the darkness. There was a loud thump as she fell to the ground, just out of sight of the humans who were trying to help her.

The three of them rushed over to the horse. Walter and Cassie in the lead, with Rachel following close behind. Father and daughter found the horse lying on the ground, dazed and still struggling to stand. She was sweating profusely, glaring at her would-be rescuers with wild, wide-apart brown eyes.

"What do you think it is?" Cassie asked her father.

"It could be a lot of things, but I'd put my money on snake bite," Walter said. "Try and keep her calm, I have to get some things from the truck. I'll be right back." Walter patted the horse's neck, then turned and walked back to where his truck was parked. Trusting Cassie's skills with animals to see her through.

"Snakes?" Rachel asked, having heard the conversation between Cassie and her dad.

"Sure. There are a lot of snakes out here." Cassie stroked the horse, then gently patted her flank. Cassie was making the same soothing sounds that she usually did when she was working with the animals in the barn.

"Not at night though, right?" Rachel asked, starting to feel more than a little nervous. "Snakes would be more of a daytime thing… wouldn't they?"

"Not always," Cassie said, not helping Rachel's piece of mind in the least.

"Oh great. You know, this is much better than going to the mall. Poison snakes and phone-calling horses," Rachel said sarcastically.

Cassie shook her head in fond exasperation. Rachel was sometimes a bit of a tease, but a more loyal friend was hard to find. Cassie turned back to the horse, and noticed that something was happening to its head. Specifically, to the horse's left ear. It looked like something was trying to crawl out. Something gray and slimy.

"Is that what I think it is?" Rachel asked, not really wanting to believe she was really seeing what she was seeing.

"Yeah, I think so," Cassie said, her mouth going dry at the thought of what this meant. "A Yeerk. There was a Yeerk in this horse."

The Yeerk was writhing its way across the grass, looking more like an oversized slug than anything else. It squirmed and oozed out of the meager light, trying to get as far away from its former host as it could. Cassie looked back over her shoulder and saw her father digging through the medical supplies that he had brought in the back of his truck. When Cassie turned back to the mare, she saw that there was a pale stallion standing in front of them. Just out of reach.

The stallion wasn't all that large, but from the first glance, Cassie knew that he was a powerful animal. The stallion walked calmly toward them, holding its proud head high. Cassie saw him look down at the injured mare, and then watched as he turned his gaze to the Yeerk writhing on the ground.

As Cassie watched, half blind in the darkness, the Yeerk tried to raise itself up as if to touch the stallion. The stallion turned and raced away into the deep darkness, and a sudden unexplainable feeling of foreboding took hold of Cassie.

"Rachel?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"We have to get out of here."

"What do you mean?" Rachel asked. "Why?"

"Just do it. Run. Now! Run!"

Cassie took hold of Rachel's arm, pulling her friend along as she ran. They managed to make it about eight steps, before the ground around them exploded in a hail of bright red light. Both girls knew that particular quality of light all too well: Dracon beams.