Simultaneously, we hit them with a civil suit, a class action on behalf of all current and former homeowners who have been psychologically intimidated or physically threatened.'
Lupe was nodding, and Barry had to admit that it made a kind of sense.
'We'll attack these assholes from all sides, and I'll be throwing so many briefs at them they won't know what hit them.' He held up the copy of the C, C, and Rs that he'd brought in with him. 'But we need to map out a specific sequence and strategy. This Kenny Tolkin who got his arms and legs chopped off. You think we could get him out of here, show the FBI or whatever law enforcement agency we approach what's been done to him?'
Barry nodded grimly. 'If worse came to worst, the four of us could track him down, pick him up, and put him in a car.'
'He wouldn't come voluntarily?'
'I don't think he'd understand. His ... something's happened to his mind as well. Shock I suppose. And he can't communicate because he has no tongue. It's ... I don't know of any other way to do it.'
'We can't just kidnap him.'
'I have my palmcorder Chuck said. 'We'll tape him.'
Jeremy nodded. 'Not a bad idea. And this is exactly what we have to do over the next few days. Figure out everything the association's done and find a concrete way to document it, plan out both our criminal and civil cases against them.'
Barry looked over at Maureen and saw in her face the same hope he felt himself. In addition to being more than a little paranoid, Jeremy was obsessive and thorough; good qualities in both a lawyer and an adversary.
Lupe headed toward the bathroom. 'A lot of iced tea,' she explained.
'Yes it was,' Danna agreed. She went downstairs to the other bathroom.
'Can we use your computer?' Barry asked Maureen.
'Go right ahead.' She smiled. 'Anything for the cause.'
'Jeremy,' Barry said. 'Why don't you put together an outline of what we need? I'll tell you what I can, and we'll fill in the blanks later.'
The three men headed down to Maureen's office, while she waited upstairs for Lupe to get out of the bathroom. 'It was a lot of iced tea,' she said.
Barry's directions were easy enough to follow, and Dylan soon found himself heading down a narrow footpath between tall trees and high bushes.
What was this? A hollow? A gulch? He wasn't up on his nature lingo, but the trail wound down between two close and heavily wooded hills, and whatever it was, it was pretty damn cool. Ahead, an obnoxious bird cawed in one of the trees and at his approach flew noisily into the air. A blue jay.
He had no idea where this path went or how far into the woods it extended, but it seemed to be heading away from Barry's hill and the roads where the houses were, into uncharted territory.
Where was the freak?
He should have asked Barry how far in he needed to go. He'd been walking--what?--five or six minutes. Was he supposed to go ten?
Twenty? Thirty? The trail dipped again, passed over what looked like a dry creek bed, then followed the bottom edge of a dark rock bluff. In a section of forest where the pine trees grew between huge standing boulders, the path forked.
Dylan stopped. He was getting tired. And bored.
'Stumpy!' he yelled.
A bird called out, but otherwise the woods were silent.
'Anybody out here?'
Nothing.
'I got a big dick!' he shouted at the top of his lungs.
He studied the diverging paths. The one to the right seemed to head up a hillside and into the hot sunlight. The one to the left sloped down into another hollow or gulch or whatever. He considered turning back, but he wanted to see the freak and he figured he should give it another ten minutes. Besides, he didn't exactly feel like spending the entire afternoon listening to Barry and Jeremy try to pick apart obscure rules and regulations.
He started down the left trail and was rewarded with an immediate drop in temperature as the trees and bushes closed in around him, blocking out nearly all of the afternoon sun and throwing the area ahead of him into shadow. He began jogging over the hard-packed dirt, hoping to cover more territory, yelling 'Hello!' every few seconds in order to flush out Stumpy or Kenny or whatever his name was.
Ahead, he thought he saw a building through the trees, and Dylan slowed down. He was out of breath already--not used to this high altitude--and he stopped for a moment, inhaling and exhaling deeply.
It was a building, he could see now, a long low structure made of wood and rock that corresponded to that of the forest and effectively camouflaged the place from anyone who wasn't almost on top of it.
Something about that didn't sit well with him. He thought of everything Barry had told them, and it suddenly seemed mighty suspicious that there was a secret hideout here in the middle of the woods where Stumpy was supposed to be.
Maybe it was where he lived.
Maybe it was where he was made.
His first gut reaction had been to turn tail and run, but as Dylan peered through the dark foliage at the equally dark building, his adrenaline started pumping. This was why he'd come out here, this was what he'd come to see.
He approached slowly, keeping a watchful eye out for any signs of life. He had stopped shouting, having determined that the best course of action would be not to announce his presence but to sneak in and out with no one I wiser. Leaving the trail, he crept through the bushes toward the building, trying not to step on twigs or leaves, trying no to make any noise. The wall ahead of him appeared to windowless, so he swung around, making a wide arc, was gratified to see that on the side of the building was , open doorway.
He pushed his way through a series of interlocke bushes, managing not to cry out when a stray broken brand dug into his ankle, and then he was standing in the clear space next to the building. This close, the similarity between the structure and the surrounding forest seemed even!
creepier. There was something organic about it, and Dylan! was suddenly aware of the fact that there was no noise here.1 The distant sound of bird cry and the underbrush scuttling | of lizards that had accompanied his trek down the path had | disappeared, replaced by silence.
He stepped forward carefully, intensely aware of the too loud sound his shoes made on the gravelly ground.
It looked like a bunkhouse, he thought, seeing it this;] close. He half-expected Stumpy--or Kenny—to come lurching out of the darkened doorway, shrieking at him, but the place seemed to be abandoned, and he appeared to be the only one here. He was grateful for that, and his reaction made him wonder what he was doing here in the first place, why he didn't just turn around and head back up the path to Barry's. He didn't know. But he did know that he needed to look inside that building, that even if he didn't see the freak, he still had to find out what was inside there.
He walked up to the doorway. The building obviously had no windows, but at the far end of what appeared to be a single large room that took up the entire interior of the structure, he saw the dim yellowish glow of an old kerosene lantern.
He squinted into the darkness but was unable to make out any specific features, so he stepped inside, stopping just past the entrance to let his eyes adjust.
It was a bunkhouse, and he could see that the small cots lining both sides of the long room were occupied. He whirled around, intending to flee, but strong hands grabbed his right arm. He swiveled to see a tall elderly gentleman staring blankly at him, The man had no ears.
Other hands grabbed his left arm, clamped around his neck, and then the people in the cots were rising, standing, walking toward him.
Or some of them were walking. Others were limping, and while they were not Stumpy, Dylan could see in the
