"Raws, pull over man," Rome shouted over the music, thumping his brother on the head.
Elenna had pulled up beside them now, and was sticking her tongue out. Raws gunned the engine. Was this maybe Raws flirting? It was a bit too predatory to be flirting. Anyway, they didn't need some stupid macho showdown in The Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico.
"Aww, hell no! You are
not going to race! Pull over or I bring on the hippity-hop, so help me God!"
As if by magic or on cue, a trailer-style diner appeared on the right hand side of the road, like the Holy freaking Grail. "Look, just pull over at that diner up there."
"I'm not eating
there," Raws said with distaste.
"Look, dude, fine. Just pull over so I can talk to you guys about the intel I found, okay? Then you can have your drag race. Please?"
Rome breathed a sigh of relief as the Camaro's wheel's crunched gravel as he pulled into the dirt parking lot. A few trucks, a few bikes, but things seemed pretty slow, which was, Rome guessed, pretty good, considering the size of the place. It was the middle of the afternoon here at The Shady Dive, where it was anything but shady. The heat was only marginally less oppressive outside of Arizona, and the humidity only slightly lower, but it was still painful.
Loud country music that made even Elenna's music sound like an angelic chorus greeted Rome as they entered, but the busty blonde waitress wearing daisy dukes did a great deal to improve his opinion of the place.
"You just take a seat wherever you like, hun," she drawled. Raws pushed passed him, making a beeline for the corner booth where they could talk uninterrupted. Elenna followed him quietly, leaving Rome to nod and grin widely and ask her what time she got off work before Mr. and Mrs. Impatience beckoned him over.
"You guys are seriously no fun," Rome huffed, sliding in next to Elenna and opening his laptop. "So. We got four 'animal attacks' floating around Gallup. Seems we got some kids--college students--who were hiking around El Malpais, camping, when they were attacked. Seven go into the canyon: only three come back out." Rome flipped through a few tabs on his computer, pausing briefly to show Raws this utterly mouth-watering shot of
Scarlett Johansson, to pull up the news report from
The Gallup Independant. "Authorities are calling it a mountain lion, I think. Well, no, sorry, that's not strictly true." He pulled up a PDF window. "Apparently to the Reservation authorities, the verdict's still out."
"Is that a
police report?" Elenna gaped, hopefully shocked more at his mad skills than that he was hacking police records, because, come on.
"No, of course not, not so loud."
"Three survived?" Raws asked, arms folded. "So we have witnesses?"
"Yes and no. They all checked into the hospital after the incident...a, uh, Mandy Tucker, Steve Byron, and Lloyd Schwartz, but none of them checked out. Our boys Steve and Lloyd are dead--of 'complications due to infection' allegedly, still working on the medical records--and Mandy's in urgent care. This attack was Tuesday, not even two days ago, and her statement on the police record is majorly sketchy. So yes, we have one witness in critical condition, and a bunch of convoluted statements from scared kids."
"So why do you think this isn't just a mountain lion, or wolf or something?"
Rome grinned. "The best part about this whole thing is that two of the victims--the ones initially killed, we have a Bridgett Thompson and Louise Simmons, were actually seen
after this whole incident went down. Check it out. We got Mr. and Mrs. Thompson claiming that their daughter came home that night, had dinner with them, slept and ate breakfast in the morning and left again, like nothing out of the ordinary happened. And Louise's Facebook has a post from a friend on
Wednesday, the day after she was supposedly killed: 'hey, great 2 run into you today! when r we hanging out lol so u can show me pics of your camping trip?'" Rome closed his laptop defiantly and folded his arms. "Now you tell me that's not freaky. We got six people dead, one in urgent care, and two of the dead ones are walking around town like they own the place. I'd go with zombies except the bodies are
definitely confirmed to be rotting in the city morgue."
Rome picked up his menu. "So who's hungry?"