Page 31 of Anywhere with You
“Ready to go?” I asked Cara.
She took one last look around. “Yes. And never.”
I led the way on the path to the parking lot, stopping halfway down a rocky slope.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to an animal the size of a Labrador, snuffling ahead at the bottom of a boulder.
“How should I know?” Cara asked, standing on tiptoe and narrowing her eyes.
“You’re the biologist.”
Cara rolled her eyes. “Oh,” she said, “that’s a javelina.”
“I knew you’d know. What’s a javelina?”
“It’s a distant relative of pigs. Very distant. Sort of a rodent-like pig.”
“Giant hairy rat pig. Got it. I’ll definitely be googling him later. Is he going to come at us with those tusks?” I asked.
As if it had heard me, it lifted its hairy snout in our direction.
“Um…” Cara said, taking a step backward.
The javelina grunted. It opened its mouth briefly to show not just the two bottom tusks, but two upper ones as well. They were long and yellow and sharp.
I stepped backward, too, my feet making a loud crunching sound on the gravel.
The javelina grunted again and charged, tiny hooves pounding the dirt, barreling toward us with surprising speed.
Cara and I ran back toward the cliff dwellings, panting as we tried to keep our footing on the rocky path, glancing behind us constantly as the tusks and the fast, panting grunts grew closer.
I was a little heavier than Cara, and I expected that she’d outpace me quickly, but I managed to keep up. I supposed that she wasn’t going on a lot of long runs after teaching all day any more than I was closing up a music shop at midnight and hitting the gym.
Then Cara’s foot slipped, and she hit one knee hard on the rocky ground.
I stopped. “Come on,” I said gently, grabbing her arms and pulling her up as fast as I could without dislocating anything.
I swore I could feel the javelina’s hot breath on my ankles as we ran.
Even without Cara’s fall, I doubt we could’ve outrun the thing. We would’ve ended up tusk-gored and bitten and probably rabid, for all I know.
But maybe the little monster was just showing off, or maybe it knew we could escape inside the walls of the cliff dwelling. Maybe it got a whiff of our sweat and decided that we wouldn’t be very tasty.
Whatever its thoughts, by the time we reached the outer wall, it had vanished. Only a few crushed bushes and a haze of kicked up dirt remained, and Cara and I could’ve caused that as easily as the javelina.
I looked carefully down the path, my eyes scanning the brush. There was no movement, not a sound.
But there was a fierce stink, the sort of eye-watering, gaggingly strong stench that was impossible to ignore.
“Fuck, are we being attacked by skunks, too?” I asked.
Cara gasped, then gagged, wiping sweat from her face as she limped to a bench. “I’d bet that’s javelina musk. I’ll look it up later.”
“You have fun with that,” I said, then started to laugh, wheezing a little because I was so completely winded. “Oh, thank God Badger isn’t here. That thing would’ve eaten him whole.”
Cara’s mouth dropped open in an expression of horror.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’d never take him out in nature. He has zero survival skills. How is your knee?”
