When Chicken Feet Cross the Highway Read online

  One was to a buddy from Basic who now worked for the Amarillo, Texas Police Department. “Hi, Rick, it’s Al. How’s it hangin’?” After a few minutes of chatter, Alexi said, “I’ve got a professional favor to ask. Someone’s been leaving weird, threatening phone messages for my Grandmother. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought, some kid with a sick sense of humor, but you never know. Can you look at three phone numbers for me? Her machine caught the numbers but it doesn’t have caller ID, and they are all supposed to be from the same person. Yes, exactly.” He gave Rick the numbers. “No big rush, since I’m here, but she’s a little worried and I don’t blame her. Lives on her own at the edge of town. Exactly. Thanks dude, and I owe you. When? And she said yes? Was she sober at the time?” He grinned at the expletives that burst from the phone. “Easy there, Siri will report you to the phone company if you keep that up. Seriously, congratulations. She’s a keeper.”

  Alexi wasn’t smiling when he called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s non-emergency number. “Yes, I called earlier today to report trespassers claiming to be power company officials. Yes, that’s me. I need to report a telephone threat to Mrs. Ekaterina Boroslavna. Yes. Normally I would not be too concerned, but she has also gone missing. She could be at my cousin’s cabin up at Steamboat, but she did not leave word and … yes, exactly.” He didn’t like having to make the call on an unsecure line. On the other hand, the background noise, and the number of other calls being made by people in the coffee shop, would make it harder for anyone trying to listen in. And he assumed that someone had tapped his grandmother’s landline.

  He gave the deputy the time of his arrival and his personal info. “No, other than Steamboat Springs, I have no idea where she might have gone, and I don’t have my cousin’s cell number. No medical problems that I know of, and her car is still at the house. Yes, you can see why I’m concerned. Thanks. I appreciate it. I hope this is a false alarm, but the phone call bothered me. Thanks.” Alexi let the deputy hang up, then finished his snack, checked the weather forecast, and glanced at the Denver headlines. “The Rockies make the World Series? Don’t brag so early in the season,” he said under his breath.

  “Oh no, are they jinxing us again?” He looked up to see the barista walking past with some empty plates and cups.

  “I’m afraid so, Ma’am.” He turned the laptop so she could see the screen.

  She read the first few lines and sighed. “Well there goes the rest of the season. That’s as bad as calling a no-hitter in the second inning. Geez.” She shook her head, making the beads on her cornrows clatter, and returned to the counter.

  Alexi looked at a few more sites, snorted with derision at the AP Coaches’ Poll, and packed his gear. He needed to get some groceries. Errand run, he took a scenic route back to the house, in case someone was following him.

  He’d just unloaded the groceries, scooting Ivan out of the way twice, when his phone rang. It was Rick.

  “Jello. What’cha got?”

  The voice at the other end sounded puzzled and concerned both. “Do you know who those numbers are supposed to belong to?”

  “Yes, a realtor. All three of them.”

  “One belongs to Rudolfo Gutierrez, who’s family reported missing three weeks ago. The second is supposed to be the Greeley Chamber of Commerce, and the third is one Nikolai Ivanovich Gospodi.”

  “Which means the third one is fake. No Russian speaker is named Gospodi. The word means ‘God,’ as in the Commander in Chief of Christianity.”

  He heard a rubbing sound and imagined Rick running a hand over his high-n-tight haircut. “Alex, what have you gotten into?”

  “Nothing yet and I intend to keep it that way,” Alexi said, fingers crossed. “I’m going to tell the sheriff what you found, since I already told him about some early-morning visitors, and leave it to him.” After I find Babushka and sort out what else is going on, he added silently.

  “You do that, Alex, ‘cuz this is starting to sound like weapons’-grade trouble. Like dealers and cartel trouble.”

  “That’s the other thing I’m worried about. Not the cartels but the Russkis.”

  “Oh frak, I’d forgotten about that bulletin. Shit. Be careful, big man, promise?”

  “I’ll be careful, quiet, and will call for backup before the shooting starts, promise.”

  “Good. Keep in touch?”

  “Will do and thanks. I owe you a big one.”

  After Rick hung up, Alexi put the phone back in its case and thumped down on the back porch step. Ivan the Purrable butted his hand with his head, and Alexi began scratching between the cat’s ears. “This has gotten too weird for words. Babushka’s missing, phone numbers that don’t match the owner, somebody trying to take Baba’s house, and the house with chicken feet walking over the interstate near downtown Denver.” He looked down at the cat. “What in the name of Muscovy is Baba Y—”

  “MEEEERooow!” Ivan screamed, cutting off Alexi’s words. He arched his back, glared at the garden, and hissed, fur on end.

  “What the fuck is that for?” Alexi told his heart it could come back into his chest and stop the drum solo. “All I asked was— ow!”

  Ivan’s claws left four bloody lines on Alexi’s hand. The cat jumped down from the porch, scuffed dirt over the brush marks in the ground, hissed, and returned to the porch. Alexi stared from the cat to the swept dirt and back, sucking his injured hand. “It’s like you don’t want me to talk about …”

  “Hiissssss.”

  “About her.” Blue eyes in a black face stared up at him. “Got it, no naming names. How about ‘the Sweeper?’” That seemed acceptable, or at least Ivan didn’t interrupt again or take more blood samples. Alexi got up and finished bringing the groceries in. Then he took a shower, had a beer and read one of the books on his e-reader.

  Ivan acted like a normal cat for the rest of the day and evening. Alexi read, looked at maps of the area, walked out to the gate and back a few times, did pushups and other exercises, and went to bed at sundown.

  He woke to a rushing, roaring sound, like wind in trees. Except there were only two trees on the place, both on the other side of the house. Alexi pulled on a pair of jeans and went to the back window. A shadow blocked the waning moon and he crossed himself, whispering a prayer for delivery from evil.

  An old woman, her hair escaping from her kerchief, rushed past the window. She rode in a giant mortar, the kind Alexi’s mother ground spices in, driving it with the pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom. Her teeth looked like iron boar’s tusks and sparks flew as she opened and closed her mouth. Instead of headlights, two beams of light shone from a human skull on the front of the mortar. The wind sound rose to a crescendo, then faded as Baba Yaga rushed past, northbound. Alexi didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be. Baba Yaga didn’t exist.

  Fifteen minutes after she disappeared from view, Alexi shoved his feet into his sneakers, grabbed a flashlight and went outside to look for tracks. The beam from the flashlight revealed flattened weeds in the garden and sweep marks, as if someone had brushed the ground with a very large broom. He crouched, laying the flashlight on the ground so the beam shone across the brush marks. He could just barely see dents, as if something very heavy had been driven into the dirt with considerable force. “The broom works better in the forest, or at higher altitude,” he guessed. “Oh fuck, what did I just say?” He stood up, looking around.

  A faint neighing sound and hoof beats made him shake his head. “No. No fucking way. You’ve got to be shitting me.” He picked up the flashlight and turned the beam off. By the moonlight he could just see the shape of a horse with a pack on its back trotting across the acreage. “Just what I need. The neighbor’s horse got loose as well. No.” He turned and went inside. I’ll call after sunrise, he thought. The horse couldn’t go anywhere from here.

  He found no trace of the horse the next morning. And neither of the neighbors was missing an animal. Alexi knocked back a beer after lunch, flopped
onto the couch, and scratched Ivan’s head. “OK. Let’s suppose that the Sweeper really exists,” he began. “If she exists, then Grandfather Frost, and rusalkas, and Vasili the Little Humpbacked Horse.” He stopped. “That was the Little Humpbacked Horse, grandson of the north wind.” He looked down at the cat, who appeared quite content to lay on his flank and be petted and scratched. “How in the name of payday did they get over here? And what’s this got to do with Babushka?” Was Babushka really . . ? No, that wasn’t possible. The Sweeper only had daughters. Or so the stories said. On the other hand, the stories said nothing about why the other drivers had not seemed to notice the little house on chicken feet, either, or ancient forest spirits in the big city. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about rusalkas here.” He crossed himself, even so, and made a note to stay away from the city reservoirs just in case. And if he saw the Firebird, he was running back to Wichita so fast he’d set a new land speed record.

  “I need to follow the Sweeper.”

  That got Ivan’s attention, and he sat, then stood, climbed onto Alexi’s leg, planted his paws on the man’s chest, and stared into his eyes, as if asking if Alexi had gone insane. “Well, everything points to Greeley, and she was headed toward Greeley. So Babushka’s probably in or around Greeley, if that’s where the walking house is. I don’t think the Sweeper could go unnoticed in Boulder or Ft. Collins, even if they are college towns.” He couldn’t think of a story where the Sweeper appeared in disguise.

  Ivan snorted.

  “Exactly. But Greeley’s well, Greeley.” And he was talking to a blue-eyed black cat that did not seem deaf in the least. “And something tells me even the Sweeper’s not going into the mountains. Not with all the campgrounds full of teenagers and hippie-wanna-bes.”

  That cat had no response to that.

  “Do you want to come?”

  Ivan shook his head. Alexi looked at the beer bottle, then at the cat, and put one hand over his eyes. “I’m going to think about all this later.” Like when he’d been on that run into Eretria and Somalia, the one that never happened. Do first, finish mission, then think about the weird stuff later if at all. “Babushka has a lot of explaining to do.”

  Ivan nodded, then hopped down from the couch and trotted off in the direction of the kitchen. That much, at least, remained normal. An Army sergeant deciding to go haring off after, oh, the second most powerful folk-tale character in Russian legend was not normal. He wasn’t a prince, wasn’t the seventh son of a seventh son or anything like that, wasn’t chosen by the Firebird. Yeah, but someone had kidnapped his grandmother, and that meant war. His name translated into Alexander, Nikolai’s son, the son of a soldier. Alexi had never left one of his own in the lurch and was not about to start now, especially not blood kin.

  He packed his kit, and a shotgun, in his grandmother’s car. It had an almost full gas tank and Alexi preferred the big, black car’s mass and its steel frame to the maneuverability of the red rental roller skate. The big car also had Colorado plates, instead of the Texas plates on the rental. The last thing Alexi needed was to get pulled over with Texas plates in Colorado while driving with a Kansas license. On the assumption that Babushka would insist on driving once he found her, he tucked her purse into the trunk as well. The big beast started just fine. The tires and spare were also in good shape, and the oil et cetera seemed OK. The hood shut with a “thud” that probably woke the dead in the Jefferson County Potter’s Field.

  Alexi filled several bowls with water and set out a large helping of cat kibble. Ivan gave him a look of hurt betrayal, sampled the dry food, and curled up on the sofa to sulk. “Sorry, Ivan, but I’m not leaving cans of tuna out to rot and stink up the place.” He also changed Ivan’s sandbox.

  That night, as Alexi had hoped and feared, Baba Yaga returned. The instant she crossed the fence line to the north, Alexi jumped into the black car, backed out of the garage, closed the door, and took off, pausing only to close and lock the gate. He could just barely see Baba Yaga’s mortar and pestle speeding north, then east. She seemed to be paralleling the roads, which made a kind of sense. She wouldn’t leave tracks, and people would think the glow from the skull was headlights. “Good God, I’m trying to think like a forest witch? St. George save me.” Baba Yaga turned east, passing the interchange with I-25 and continuing out into the country, then north again. Alexi lost her around two AM. He pulled into an abandoned gas station’s parking lot, shut down the big car, and napped.

  An hour or two after sunrise, he drove into Greeley. It had grown since the last time he’d come through, but the “No War With Iran” and “No Blood for Oil” signs, along with the “Free Tibet,” “Coexist,” and “Save the Whales” bumper stickers had not changed. Alexi fed the car at a gas station, then went in and got a couple bottles of soda and some jerky.

  One of the other customers, an older man with a long grey beard in need of a trim, sandals, and a baggy shirt, gave Alexi the evil eye. Alexi ignored it, although if the guy called him a baby killer, he might say something back. “Another damn Texan with the oil company,” the guy muttered. Louder he added, “Fracking is poisoning our water, Tex, you hear me? Go home!”

  Why not? Alexi gave the man a confused look and said in his worst Russian accent, “Tex? Nyet. Ivan, weternary student. Fix cows and steers.”

  The gal behind the counter rolled her eyes and took his money. “Look, Jerry, not every young guy with short hair works in the oil field.” She turned back to Alexi. “Sorry about that. Have a nice day.”

  “Spazibo.”

  He’d last seen Baba Yaga disappearing over a low rise onto a county road, so Alexi set up a grid search, cruising back and forth on the section line roads. He’d been at it for an hour when he glanced up a dirt driveway, did a double-take, and almost drove into the ditch. The last thing he expected was to drive around a curve in the road and actually see the little house on chicken legs. First, he did not recall curves in the roads east of Greeley. Second, well, surely someone would have noticed a small house moving around on the lot under its own power, right? Then he realized what had happened.

  Alexi continued past the house, pulled onto a dirt road, and laughed. He laughed until his sides hurt, his nose was running, and he couldn’t see for the tears. “Oh shit, everything they say about Colorado’s Front Range is true, God help me.” Most people wouldn’t even notice the place, and of those that did, probably half assumed they were having an acid flashback or something and just kept driving. He drank a bottle of soda to calm down and collect his thoughts. Dang, but he’d forgotten how hot black cars got in summer.

  As he thought about how to approach the house, he decided that straight on would be the easiest. That’s what the characters in the stories always did. You walk past the skull fence up to the house and ask for a job. And then hope for the best. “Yeah, and the Sweeper eats the ones who screw up, and uses their heads for patio lights.” Was that what happened to the missing guy? He wondered a little.

  Alexi pulled his cross out of his collar, rubbed it as he prayed, and hid it again. He let a semi pass, followed by two escort vehicles and one of those super-trucks carrying a wind turbine blade, then backed out onto the county road and returned to the house on chicken feet. The skull fence and house sat a ways back from the edge of the road, and Alexi parked in the summer-brown grass not far from the fence. Big grasshoppers leaped out of the grass as he crunched through it on his way to the gate. Then he stopped, studying the scene.

  Someone had painted colorful designs on the skulls so they looked like Mexican Day-of-the-Dead cookies. Sure, why not hide in plain sight? The locals probably thought it was an art instillation or something equally stupid. On the other hand, no one would ask too many questions, either. Alexi gave the Sweeper points for local knowledge.

  He watched the house trotting around. It moved about like the chickens he’d seen in Africa, scratching here and there, sitting for a while, then moving again. The house did not look quite like the illustrati
ons he remembered from the fairy tale books, but it had been twenty years or so since he’d last looked at them. And a thatched roof probably did not fare well in the Colorado wind. Was Greeley County zoned? If so, that might also warrant a change in roof. The shingles looked as if they were made of wood, and wooden ship-lap siding covered the walls. He didn’t want to know what the dull reddish brown of the shutters came from. He counted a chimney and two vents, one that looked a lot like a plumbing vent. How do you get plumbing permits for a walking house? Alexi shook himself. I can’t believe I’m thinking about that kind of thing while I’m standing here watching a building walk around an empty lot.

  Except the lot was not empty. Behind the house, when it moved to the south end of the yard, he could see either a small barn or large shed. Alexi walked around the outside of the fence, one eye out for the Sweeper. He also listened and looked for rattlesnakes. They denned up this time of day, he thought he remembered from desert warfare training, but still, he’d probably find a strange one. The small barn sat inside the skull fence, with the door facing into the yard. Damn. He couldn’t just duck through the fence, either, as he recalled. In some stories the skulls dealt with trespassers almost as harshly as their creatrix did.