Two barefoot people in brown shirts and pants paced side-by-side with shotguns in hand. A shut gate made of corrugated metal was the only way through the razor wire fence behind them. Small platforms near the dirt road behind the gate allowed for another four sentries to keep watch with hunting rifles at the ready.
A black sedan covered in dirt rolled to a stop on the uphill dirt road. Murphy leaned out the open window with his badge wallet visible to the armed blockade.
“United States Department of Homeland Defense,” Murphy said. “I need to get through to investigate a robbery.”
“Nothing’s been stolen here.” The larger of the two men with shotguns raised it at the car’s hood. His hair was long and formed into strands looped through wood and bone beads. “And this gate means we have private property. Best move along back to your pen, little piggie.”
“I have a warrant.” Murphy pressed a button on the dashboard and a holograph of a document floated in front of the car for the two men to read. “Signed ten minutes ago by a state judge.”
The two men didn’t budge.
“If you don’t let me in, you’ll be subject to arrest.” Murphy slid back into the car and gulped. He avoided making eye contact with the thickets at the side of the road.
“One pig is going to arrest all of us?” The large man raised his shotgun ever so slightly toward the windshield.
“Hey, I’m not here to have a gunfight.” Murphy put the car in reverse.
“Then turn around and forget this place,” the large man said. His beaded hair bounced off his chest as he pointed his shotgun down the road. “Because I’m ready.”
“I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that.” Murphy turned the car around on the narrow dirt road and rolled away.
“They don’t suspect a thing,” Emma said through the radio.
“Thank you for the distraction,” Victoria said, turning off her view of Murphy’s feed. She crept through wooded thickets of oak and pine trees with dense shrubs of poison oak.
“Call me when you need me.” Murphy drove down to a switchback beyond the gate’s view and parked the car. He kicked his feet up and nibbled pumpkin seeds. “They’ll probably keep a close watch on my parking so close to their land.” He pushed the chair’s back all the way down and flicked a switch on the dashboard with his heel. A holographic version of Murphy sat upright in the seat with a phone to his ear. “Kind of strange watching the back of my head chatter on the phone. If only I had a marker to draw a face.”
“You’d draw on your own head if your copy was real?” Emma clicked her tongue as if judging her teammate.
“Sure, wouldn’t anybody?” Murphy winced as he realized what he’s just said to the team.
“I never drew on any of my sisters,” Victoria typed.
The ex-soldier hopped a collapsed wooden fence on the opposite side of the property. Cooper kept pace but stumbled through the brush due to wearing a hooded jacket drawn shut over his head to protect from the rash-inducing plants.
“I’d like to face paint myself if I were to ever run into a copy,” Emma said.
“Cut the chatter,” Cooper ordered through text. “Stick to analyzing our signals.”
Victoria and Cooper took careful steps as they cleared the bushes and tree line and approached a barbed wire fence. The trailers were just beyond the fence with no one present.
“I wish I could pull up live satellite feeds from the area,” Emma said. “We would get an assignment deep in the woods where nothing has coverage. But even if there were coverage, the overcast is too thick.”
“I am fine with what I can see,” Victoria typed with eye tracking as she moved. “Reminds me of Colombia.” She scanned the trailers for signs of activity, checking through open doors and plain windows without curtains. “I am getting nostalgic chills.”
“Good or bad chills?” Emma’s voice was joined by keyboard clicks.
A young man with a rifle returned from the gate and went to a wooden picnic table to retrieve a water bottle. He sipped from it and Victoria never took her pistol’s sights off his head from her hiding spot only yards away behind another table.
“Good chills,” Victoria typed. “Very, very good chills.”
“Our clearance to use lethal force is only if we’re directly threatened,” Cooper typed in emergency print, which displayed as yellow and with a larger font. “Do not shoot that boy.”
“He is probably old enough to vote,” Victoria typed. “Maybe. But he is big enough to shoot that rifle, that is for certain.”
“Reserve Deputy, control yourself.” Cooper raised his own pistol and scanned the area as he hid behind a trailer covered in bloody hand prints shaped like deer and boars.
“Are you sure the signal is here?” Cooper peeked into a window to look for any signs of the teleporting man from Monterey.
“The coverage isn’t great in that area, but you should be within a yard of it,” Emma said. “Margin of error with that poor coverage is twenty yards.”
“I see it,” Victoria typed.
She lowered her head so her camera would pick up a pair of inch-long barbed metal darts on the picnic table beside her. A bloodied set of pliers rested in the middle of a small blood stain on the bench portion of the table.
The young man finished his water and collapsed the bottle before he threw it into a nearby blue dumpster between two trailers. He stepped into an open trailer and emerged seconds later without his rifle. He jogged away toward the huge field.
Victoria tracked her target but when he was far enough away, she scooted into his trailer and seized his hunting rifle.
“This weapon is in excellent condition,” Victoria said aloud. She licked her lips and aimed the weapon at the boy. “Barefoot and dirty, but they have nice equipment.”
“That firearm was reported stolen from a pawn shop three weeks ago,” Emma said.
“Something tells me hunting was more difficult before their vanishing benefactor,” Victoria said as she gazed through the trailer.
Pelts and skulls from deer, boar, coyotes and rabbits were hung on filthy twine all around the trailer’s interior. Shelves and small tables contained rusted knives of differing designs, including kitchen knives and hardware utility razors.
“Those look like animal components for dark magic,” Murphy said.
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