***
We pushed on until the sun moved into the western sky. I felt the warmth shifting from the top of my head to my left cheek, and I knew that we'd need to seek shelter soon. Or hope that we were far enough in the hinterlands that the vampires wouldn't find us.
"Maybe we can find a barn," Ginger said.
"A hayloft," I agreed. "Somewhere up high. And a place where we can hide Horace."
"This looks like farm country to me," Alex said.
We followed a dirt road tracking along the edge of a fence. At first, the fence seemed to be like ordinary barbed wire. But then it grew to more than eight feet in height, chainlink with razorwire coiled like ribbons at the top.
Alex squinted at it. "I sure hope we're not in a prison area."
The barbed wire. It was angled inwardly, as if it was intended to keep something inside. I had never seen a prison. I had occasionally seen pictures of criminals in the police blotter section of the local newspaper when I got ahold of one, but I didn't understand most of the crimes. I was twelve before I knew what burglary was, and fourteen before I understood the word rape. I had never understood the point of robbery, since Plain people would give anything they had to a needy person. I shuddered. "Let's hope not."
"There are no paved roads here," Ginger said. "A prison would have paved roads. All paid for with taxpayer money."
"Good point," Alex said. "And that doesn't look like a prison."
He pointed ahead of us to a ramshackle collection of buildings. I saw what looked like a barn made out of corrugated metal, a few outbuildings, a house, and what appeared to be cages. It smelled like an outhouse.
My heart thudded in my chest when I saw a black shadow moving behind the chainlink fence.
"What is that?" I whispered.
"Oh, damn," Ginger said.
I walked up close to the fence, peered in. A languid form slipped between trees, pacing, sinuous. I couldn't get a complete look at the creature, so I moved closer.
It paused, stared back at me with golden eyes.
It was a cat.
A really, really large cat. It was larger than my golden retrievers, with a head the size of a melon. It was covered in black fur, and it was skinny. So thin that its ribs rippled when it walked and its shoulder bones jutted out of its back. I smelled feces in its pen, and the flies were thick in the air.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's a jaguar," Ginger said.
"It's starving," I said, staring at its empty food trough, overturned, on the ground. I realized that the razorwire fence didn't go entirely around the property. It was in squares and runs-makeshift cages.
"And he's not the only one." I heard Alex's grim tone behind me. He pointed to other enclosures. Tin roofs had been partially torn away by the wind. I saw two bears in one cage. One was clearly dead, covered in flies. The other sat with its back turned to us, its snout on the ground. A pair of wasted striped cats, orange and black, paced agitatedly within another cage. They were as bony as the jaguar.
"Those are tigers?" I asked.
"Yes. But they're not supposed to look like that."
I had only seen tigers in books, on my covert trips to the library back home. Those tigers had been plump and well fed, not these skeletons with stripes. Skin hung from their bones, like some kind of gaudy material in a fabric store. Their bellies and legs were covered in mud, and their eyes were hollow.
I approached gingerly.
I heard a deep growling, so deep that it was almost impossible to hear.
And the tiger lunged for me. Its paws slammed up against the chain link fence with an incredible amount of force, bowing it outward with a crash.
I jumped backwards. Claws larger than my fingers hooked in the fence, and the tiger growled again.
My heart hammered, but the fence held.
Alex grabbed my arm. "Don't tempt them. They're hungry. And we're just meat."
My eyes filled with tears. I knew we were just meat to the vampires. But I saw something different in the eyes of the starving animals. In vampire eyes, I only saw evil. In these, I saw pain.
I heard a thin howling behind me. I wheeled, spied a pack of a half-dozen wolves in a dog run the size of some I'd seen for small dogs. They trotted along their side of the fence, calling, yipping at us. They were dirty, terribly thin, with sores on their paws and tufts of fur missing. Their golden eyes watched me with something like hope.
"Is this a zoo?" I wrinkled my forehead. I had never been to one, but I had heard of them, seen pictures in books. Those facilities had elaborately built habitats, with healthy-looking animals and zookeepers in uniform. This was not what I'd imagined.
"No. This is . . ." I could hear the anger in Alex's voice. "These are some jerks with a private collection. Who aren't taking care of their animals. Or can't." I could tell by the set of Alex's jaw that this infuriated him.
With trepidation, we walked the short distance to the house. It was two stories, covered in vinyl siding with plastic shutters. The front door was painted red. Alex pounded on it.
We waited. No one answered.
He pounded again, tried the knob. "It's locked."
"I don't see any cars or trucks around," Ginger observed. "They must have left." Her hand was pressed to her mouth, and not just to block out the smell of the animals.
Now fury rose in me, too. I had assumed that something had happened to the people. I couldn't conceive of anyone voluntarily leaving their animals in this condition. I had occasionally heard of stories about Amish puppy mills and animal mistreatment in the Plain community, but I had not witnessed that in my own little village. I didn't see how that could be tolerated. My parents had always taught me that animals were also God's creatures and deserved to be cared for with the best of our ability.
"Hopefully the vamps haven't been here," Alex said. "If the people left, the vamps wouldn't tackle a tiger to eat. That's not as easy a snack as a domestic animal."
"There's no sign of a break-in," Ginger said, peering through a ground-level window. She jiggled the front doorknob. "Locked."
I stared at it. "Could it be a trap?" We knew the vampires were smart enough for that.
Alex frowned. "Not likely. If this was a trap, they would leave the door open and let the food come to them."