He had to go outside. It was nicer inside, warm, dry, no murderous animals. He grabbed his rifle off its rack and checked it briefly for problems. He was wearing his warm clothes to ward away the chill of the deep north. It had only grown worse in the last few weeks. A lot of things had grown worse.

He couldn't even check his email. The entire Internet, down. At least his power was on. Small blessings. Not as if he'd want to try living without heat and lights. He grabbed the door's handle firmly in his right hand, gun held awkwardly but readily in his left.

He remembered when they only worried about a possible moose or a hungry polar bear snooping around. Those were the days, in retrospect.

With the firm click of metal on metal, he pulled the door open to reveal the wintery landscape that was his home. Even that had changed. The hills weren't in the right places, to start. His neighbors, distant as they were, they hadn't moved. The town used to be on a little hill. Then it was in a little valley.

He felt like he was being watched. He pulled the door shut with a firm slap, knowing it was locked. He held his gun in both hands, turning to look around carefully. With a thump, he bumped the roof of his patio with the end of the gun, hopefully to startle any wild animals up there.

Besides a bird or two that flew away, that wasn't it.

A faint noise, like a whimper, had him spinning in place to face it. Nothing.

With a soft grunt, he moved for his truck. "The whole world's gone crazy..."

He tossed his gun into the back and pulled open the front door. His truck wasn't empty.

A bundle of fur and horns peered at him from the passenger seat. It wore a poncho, brightly colored. It jumped at him with a sudden cry that he echoed in a shout. He lunged for his dropped gun, bemoaning his poor choice in setting it down.

The thing made strange sounds, waving its hooves at him.

"One of you killed Steve." He got his hands on his gun. "He was a good man."

It jumped in place, scowling at him in a manner animals did not often do.

"What, you mad?" He leveled the gun at the thing. "Mad you didn't get me?"

It shrank back a half-step, only to reverse course, making a defiant sound.

"Brave, ain'tcha, just as brave as a polar, but a shot or two usually convinces even those there are easier lunches." He cocked the gun, not technically required, but the sound was comforting. "Go on, shoo!" Would loud noises work? It sometimes did with animals.

It raised a cloven hoof, waving at him again before reaching forward and making a stamp in the snow, clean and even. It raised the hoof and made another stamp in the snow, just as neat and clear.

"The hell?" Was it trying to communicate with him? Most animals did not pay much mind to the prints they made, if they even noticed they were leaving tracks to start with. "What even are you?" It just made more strange sounds. Were they words?

Was that little thing, about the size of a small dog, trying to talk to him?

He was going crazy. Still, it hadn't charged him, or really done much besides jump out of his truck, which any right thinking man would do if he didn't invite them in there. "What do you want?"

"(Me)" The yak put a little hoof to her small chest. "(Yana. You?)" She pointed at the big bipedal thing her people were fighting with. Sure, her parents had warned her away from them, from even being in the area, but she had disobeyed. Yaks were best at disobeying.

"Ain't got a clue what yer sayin', if yer even sayin' anythin' to start wit'." He felt a bit silly pointing a gun at something so small and non-threatening once he had a look at it. It was like the ones that attacked them, but so small... "Hey wait, are you one of their youngins?"

Where there were young, there were parents. He raised his gun back up and began to turn just to catch a horn through his ribs. He slammed back against the truck as if he had been run into by a bus, or a grown yak. He bounced off bonelessly, crumpling to the ground with a bloody wheeze.

The larger yak that had done it glared at Yana, blood running down one of his horns. "(You not supposed be here. Go home, Yana. You in big trouble!)"

Yana squealed in shock at the abrupt violence. That was somehow so much worse than when they stomped on things. That strange thing had been... alive... It was on the ground, in pain, hurt... "(Uncle! I try talk! What...)"

"(No talk, go home.)" He thrust a hoof back towards their home. "(Not place for foals.)"

"(But...)"

He stomped up to her and put a clean horn right under her, flipping her up onto his back. He began to stampede back towards their home. "(Father kill me something happens to you. Bad Yana, Bad.)"

The injured man clutched weakly at his side, trying to keep his blood from getting out so readily. "God... damn it..." He had dropped his guard for a moment, but sometimes, a moment was all it took. He struggled against the pain and vertigo that threatened to pull him back to the ground as he weakly scrambled half-upright, crawling towards the truck. With bloody hands, he got the door open and dragged himself inside.

He was getting blood on everything. Everything... His vision was dark. That wasn't good, he was pretty sure. He grabbed the radio receiver and clicked the thing on. "Damn... it all to hell, someone, help..."

"'sthat you, Rob?" asked a female voice. "Where you at?"

"At the house, damn it... Fuck..." He let go of the receiver, not by choice. His hand fell open. The world was spinning. He crashed down on the chair. His last thought was that at least the inside of the truck was just a tiny bit warmer than outside.

Shame he hadn't been able to close the door.

It was a short time later that another car arrived, red and blue lights spinning, but no siren going. Sirens were not as often required when there was no traffic to encourage out of the way. It pulled up beside the house and disgorged a tall man that half-hopped free. "Rob? You here?"

He saw the truck, and a leg hanging free of it. "Shit." He hurried over to find the rest of Rob attached. That was a cool comfort as he got to seeing if the man was alive.

A quick press of fingers to several key points all confirmed, there was no pulse. He was cold. He had died long ago. "God damnit..." He grabbed at the radio attached to himself. "We have a 10-54. Can you send some--" He paused, looking away from the mic to take a breath, trying to calm himself. "Send a coroner. Rob deserves more than this."

"10-4. I'm on it," came the dispatch's quick reply. "What happened to him? Shit, I was gonna play him later today."

The police officer looked around with a frown. "Ain't no investigator. Damn, blood everywhere." He began to pat Robert down, looking for clues to the real source of things. There was one place that the blood ran most freely. "Ah shit. He's got a hole in him, right in the ribs. That's enough for me. If the investigators want a peek, they can have it."

"Roger that. Go wash off. Pretty sure he wouldn't mind."

"Roger." He heaved a sigh. Robert wouldn't have minded. They had been friends. He kicked the tire of the truck. Robert shouldn't have died! "He was supposed to outlive me, call me a damn moron for being a cop, laughing on my grave." They had joked about it so many times. It was gallows' humor at its finest, but it was still humor, and Rob was a fine drinking and card buddy.

"Ain't right..." On a hunch, he aborted the plan to wash himself. There was more he could do. Before it snowed and obscured things, he looked around in the snow. There were Rob's prints, and a track.. "Did he drag himself?" He could see where he had smashed into the truck hard enough to leave a dent. "Fucking hell..."

There were hoof prints. Big cloven prints. He took a picture of them. "The boys back at base may make something of this." At least it wouldn't be snowed over. He was helping, but that didn't bring Rob back.

He circled carefully, finding more prints. They were also cloven, but so much smaller. They led up to the truck, them came back out of the truck before vanishing. He took pictures of the whole thing, where the blood touched down near some of the prints, all of it he could find.

He could imagine the big one crashed into Rob, murdered him flat out. He wasn't sure what the small one was doing. Was it watching and cheering the big one on? Who knew. He shook it off. They were animals. He was just casually deciding they could laugh at something's misery.

Those big... things... They were more dangerous than any of the other beasts they'd had to wrangle in the past.

"Hey, dispatch." He was holding his radio again. "Just thought I'd mention there's good sign it was one of those big things with the horns. Took pictures for the detectives."

"10-4 on that. 10-22c. There isn't more you can do, alright?"

"Copy that." He let go of the button but grunted. There should have been more he could do. He stormed back to his own vehicle, climbing inside. He was a damn police officer. Protecting his friends? One of the things he should have been able to do.

With the sound of snow-tracked tires grabbing into the stuff, he got the car moving back towards town proper. He had other people to watch over. He wouldn't let anyone else get it. "Stupid things..."

In a sterile room, a smiling woman nodded towards Sandra. "What is your overall impression of the thing you met?"

"I think it was a 'she', not an 'it', to start. She was very nice, and curious, and playful as hell." She crossed her arms under her chest, eyeing the... was it a psychologist? She wasn't sure. "I think she played some catch, then some volleyball, and we would have had a bar-b-que with her if the cops hadn't busted up that plan."

"Could you communicate with her?" asked the smiling but professional woman.

"She was speaking some crazy language, but I'm pretty sure it was a language. It was like she was singing, but she was trying. She even told me her name."

"What was her name?" She was writing notes down on a clipboard she was holding. "Precisely, if you can, not translated."

"I don't know what the translation would be," confessed Sandra with a shrug. "But it went something like <Mobile Coral>. Isn't that a pretty name?"

"Sandra's not a bad name either," assured the interrogator. "I'm Isabelle."

"That ain't bad either," admitted the college student with a half-smirk. "She was real nice... I hope she wasn't shot, and doesn't hate us forever."

"I wasn't told she was harmed." Isabelle made notes casually. "What would you say most clearly made it apparent that she meant you no harm?"

Sandra hiked a brow. "The part when she grabbed a ball and gave it a gentle toss at us? The part where she made a wicked spike and cheered at the point she had scored? Did I mention she knew how to play volleyball?"

Author's Notes:

Things grow more tense. Yaks are best at... killing a dude?

This is an extra update to catch us up. The patron starts this later in the month, so I felt I owed an extra, and here it is! Yay!

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