Chapter One

Sherry Shafer and her husband Tom bought their four-year-old son Tom Jr. a two-month-old boxer pup for his birthday. They invited all his little friends and their parents and most of the neighbors to his Saturday afternoon birthday party. It was a perfect mid-summer day under a high-in-the-sky hot Texas sun with just enough wind to make the heat bearable. Everyone at the party seemed to be having a good time, especially the puppy, as it bounded barking around the yard chased by a half-dozen screaming kids. But something bothered Sherry.
She stood on the lower step of the ranch house porch and watched the antics of the playful pup and the happy children. There were balloons on the porch where she was standing and somebody—probably her husband Tom—had hung some at the end of the driveway on the wooden fence that separated their little homestead from the Pollard’s huge 3Bar Ranch so that everyone could find the party. Which was really kind of silly, as everybody knew where everybody else lived in the Locust area.
She and Tom bought this little piece of Texas prairie from Mr. Pollard the year after they were married. He’d given Tom a good deal because he worked for the ranch as an accountant and office manager, and business in the Locust area was very good for the first time since her grandfather’s day. Mr. Pollard was one of the biggest ranchers in the area; he had several thousand head of cattle. About a dozen of which, Sherry saw, now stood on the other side of the board fence intently watching the birthday party.
Something about the way they watched the children worried Sherry. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something wasn’t right. Was it because they seemed so intent on what the children were doing? Sherry had grown up in the nearby cow town of Locust and knew cows were curious creatures, and not nearly so stupid as some people thought. But until this moment she’d never seen them quite so focused—except when something frightened them. Did they think the puppy and the children posed some sort of danger? They sure didn’t look frightened; they looked sinister.
A moment later it came to her—when she’d last felt this way. This felt weird: it took her back to her sophomore year at Lubbock State. She’d been a party-girl. The football team had lost the state title that evening and the fans turned ugly on campus. Trash fires were started, a few cars damaged, some windows broken and the crowd lurched drunkenly toward downtown Lubbock. Sherry and her boyfriend at the time, Ed…Williams she thought his name was… went along. Ed was a senior and had been drinking all day. Sherry wanted to be one of his gang.
She remembered they didn’t get far. The crowd came howling around a corner and there were the cops half way down the street. The mayor of Lubbock must have called for help, because this was the Texas Ranger riot squad waiting for them. And these guys weren’t wearing the Ranger’s tourist-friendly, traditional ten-gallon hats: they were dressed in black with helmets and body armor, holding long nightsticks with one hand and Plexiglas shields in the other. The crowd roared its defiance, but the Rangers waited, no threats, no insults, just a look of menace that dropped Sherry’s heart to her feet and caused her to pull back. After the riot, when she saw the bloodied heads and broken bones of some of her more aggressive friends—including Ed whatever his name was—she felt better about her cowardice.
The waiting Angus cows reminded her of the policemen: big, black-clad and silent. They weren’t wearing body armor, of course—they didn’t need it with their weather-hardened hides—but they were all far bigger than any policeman could ever be. Bigger, in fact, than cows around Locust used to be. Something she’d noticed in the last year or so, but when she brought the subject up with her husband he’d brushed her off by saying she was just remembering when she was a kid and everything looked different. 
Maybe, but she didn’t think so; things usually looked bigger when you were a kid. And besides, she wasn’t alone in this: talk around Locust centered on cattle and everybody she knew had mentioned how much bigger and healthier the cattle seemed recently. 
There was something else, something she could hardly believe she was seeing— actually didn’t believe she was seeing. It had to be a trick of light from the bright Texas sun. The cows’ eyes seemed to be changing. Shifting color. One moment she saw the innocent, gentle, brown bovine eyes she was accustomed to; the next they burned a bright, ruby red. She wanted to believe it was just a trick of the light reflecting off the sandy soil, but it chilled her to the bone.
She looked around at the other parents on the porch. There weren’t many; most were inside preparing the huge cake Mr. Pollard, the boy’s godfather, had bought at the Locust Bakery for the occasion. She wondered if anyone else saw anything strange.
Apparently not: they were all talking together and no one but she had their eyes on the cows. Maybe, she thought, I’m hallucinating.
The children certainly weren’t paying any attention to what was happening on the other side of the fence. All of them were locals; not one without a parent in some part of the beef industry. Cows were just part of the local color to them like sand and creosote bushes. Most didn’t pay any more attention to the cattle then to the dry grass in the yard.
The children were only a few yards from the fence now. Tommy was closing in on the yipping pup. Her nerves tingling, Sherry found herself stepping off the porch preparing to…she wasn’t sure what.
Suddenly the pup couldn’t take it any more. The kids might not have noticed the cows, but he had: he bolted toward the monsters hovering on the other side of the fence with Tommy and half-a-dozen of his little friends in hot pursuit. Sherry’s heart leaped into her throat. She ran.
The pup shot under the wooden fence. By then Sherry was halfway across the yard, sprinting like a quarter-miler and screaming at the top of her lungs. The children heard her scream and most came to a stop, but Tommy kept right on after the pup.
Tommy was a good-sized four-year-old; he had to come to a stop at the fence and drop down on his knees to crawl after the pup; a moment later he was all but through the fence. Sherry, running the fastest she’d ever run in her life, launched herself through the air like a short-stop trying to make a save at second base. She came down hard on her breasts, the sand nearly tore her thin blouse off and she tasted blood from a bit lip, but she caught Tommy by the foot and yanked him back under the fence.
The pup, yipping wildly with excitement, reached the waiting cows.
The nearest cow lowered its huge head and charged the puppy. The little dog leaped to one side as it passed, coming close to another cow. Sherry, lying in the dust on the other side of the fence a few feet from the animals’ hooves, realized the cow was actually holding one sharp hoof up like an executioner with an axe. The pup probably never saw the hoof that split open its little skull and pulped it into the thirsty earth. The big cow reared and its front hooves pumped like twin pistons.
Sherry shrieked, the children screamed; Tommy started to cry. And then—Sherry was certain this time—the cows’ big brown eyes turned a bright, burning red. My God! Sherry thought as she scooped Tommy up and ran for the porch, they enjoyed that!
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