It didn’t smell of vinegar or piss, so he brought it to his lips and drank and drank until the stale water ran over his chin and he began to cough. When the fit subsided, he sank down onto the four-by-four stoop pressed into the dirt.It was almost evening. The police hadn’t found him, and he still hadn’t found any sign of Lila or the creature. That’s what it was—inhuman. Bud had seen it in the way it handled Lila, the way it was able to move away so quickly, like an animal with a prize.He listened. No helicopter. No dogs.About an hour earlier, the sound of barking dogs had stopped. He thought maybe he had been wrong, that they hadn’t been police dogs after all. Just a feral pack, or someone’s guard dogs. People were always getting busted for growing pot up here, and the woods were dense enough in some places that you could hide a still or a meth operation pretty easily.Did the bastard still have Lila? Was she even alive? She had to be cold as hell. She was always complaining about being cold.
