EXCERPT

Chapter 1

Officer Willy Williams, a fourteen year veteran with the Colorado State Department of Forestry and Conservation was on his usual eleven-thirty lunch break when he heard the urgent dispatch of a missing persons report over the tinny sounding speakerphone. The last time he could remember receiving an MPR in Mt. Wellington was well over two years ago. The outcome was not a happy one either as Willy recalled. The search ended when a local scuba diver found the body of a missing four year old girl at the bottom of Trout Lake. a popular summer tourist spot for campers and boaters of all ages. The youngster had somehow wandered away from her family in the middle of the night while they were camping out near the lake. The only positive outcome was the hiring of full time lifeguards for the summer months and the gating off of the swimming area around the deep water lake to reduce the likelihood of any future drownings.

The Sheriff's Department usually relayed any missing persons reports to Willy's outpost first since the forest was the most likely location for a lost person. They had put out the All-Points-Bulletin for a missing fifteen year old local boy by the name of Travis Traynor. The APB gave a somewhat vague description of the teenager along with his pet beagle who was always by his side. The officer knew of the family from the local Main Street Diner. It was the only decent restaurant in town that served a wholesome meal at a resonable price. The missing boy's mother worked there full time and probably knew where the boy hung out during the summer months. That was the main reason why Willy wasn't over concerned for the kid's whereabouts at the moment. After all, school was finally out for the summer which meant boredom for most school kids without vacation plans. The boy and his dog were probably hiking through the woods or fishing at this very moment. Nonetheless, Willy decided that he would swing by the restaurant on his way home and check things out. Besides, he hadn't had a decent evening meal in a week or more.

If Willy's memory served him correctly, the boy's mother was always at the restaurant. She was an attractive single mother whose bubbly personality and genuine smile could light up a room. It was a Friday, and the end of a long week. The prospect of going home alone to a dark, empty house somehow didn't sound too appealing to Willy, especially when compared to a hot, home-style cooked meal being served up by an available, good-looking waitress. If he had to eat another cold sandwich or bowl of microwavable soup, he would have to drown himself in the lake.

Officer Williams was about to call it a day when he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. peering up at the sky once again through his tarnished binoculars, he could barely discern the huge dark mass moving toward his direction. Whatever it was, it was moving swiftly toward the tower. At first glance, it appeared to be a large black cloud of smoke. Then it picked up speed as it moved quickly toward him until finally encompassing his entire field of view. He had never witnessed such a strange phenomenon in all his years of forestry. The alarms went off inside his head warning him to flee the tower. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up sending chills down his sweaty, muscular back. He realized much too late what was approaching his perch. The last recorded images his brain registered just before the large plate glass window exploded were the huge, black-winged creatures. Their ear-piercing screams reverberated inside his eardrums like smashing cymbals. His head exploded. It was at that moment that his world went completely dark.

The wildlife officer lay motionless on the bare wooden floor as the vultures swooped down upon his warm, lifeless body. In a wild feeding frenzy, they began ripping chunks of flesh from the corpse. Within minutes his face was completely undistinguishable. The once neatly pressed uniform was now just a shredded heap of blood stained cloth. The vultures were relentless in their repeated attacks on the wildlife officer. Within minutes, the entire body was stripped of its flesh, including its meaty internal organs. The buzzards made quick work of the corpse and were very careful not to waste any edible parts. The hideous looking creatures hissed and grunted at one another in an awkward ceremonial dance as their long bload-soaked bald heads bobbed in and out of the body cavity. One of the larger vultures shrieked and lunged forward as it fought off the other buzzards for the rest of the kill. Then, in an act of defiance, the self-imposed leader stood its ground as it devoured the remains of the entrails. The rest of the vultures swayed back and forth as they grunted and shrieked to one another. Once the entire body was stripped completely clean, the vultures spread their enormous wings and disappeared into the darkening twilight sky. Their ascent was almost as swift as their decent. All that remained visible from the air were the skeletal remains of what was once human, clad only in a pair of bloodied work boots. Next to the lifeless body was a bronze-plated badge bearing the inscription, Officer W. Williams, Badge No.14.

The tower stood eerily quiet with the exception of the radio that intermittently repeated the same message from the Sheriff's office regarding the missing teenager. Later that evening the broadcast included not one, but two missing persons...

(All Rights Reserved) c. 2007 Frank Darrow

Go to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble (bn.com) to order your copy today!

xxxxxxxxxxx<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tdStz1LY09k&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tdStz1LY09k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>x