CHUPACABRA

Chapter Fifteen: The Interloper

"Sucker?"

"Jesus, girl. You really know nothing, huh," Cade says. "Are you not from around here? From across the border?"

"Border? What is here anyways?" Thirty-Seven suddenly speaks up. He rips the last of the cactus spines out with a pained grunt.

"The Northern border, y'know, the one cutting all of southern America off? You're in the Vaine nature park right now." Cade frowns, beginning to look anxious. "Don't you know? You didn't come looking for us?"

"Why would we?" Forty asks. As they walk deeper into the woods, she starts smelling more of that strange scent from earlier. It's vaguely dog-like, more wet than a Chupa. Either way, it lays heady in the surrounding trees.

Cade suddenly stops, turning to give them a quizzical look. "You mean you really don't know?"

Forty shakes her head. "I... it's hard to explain." She doesn't want to talk about the compound. How can this man not know if he is a specimen also?

"Where are you from?" Cade asks, sounding almost accusatory. He stalks towards Forty, stopping just a few inches shy to smell the air. "You don't smell like a regular Sucker... more chemical."

"It's fucking complicated, alright?" Thirty-Seven hisses, loping over to get in between Forty and Cade.

A cock of a gun. "It better not be complicated enough that you don't start talking," a female voice snarls. Forty looks over to find a young girl holding a pistol to the side of Thirty-Seven's head. Unlike Cade, she has not even the barest trace of scent. Thirty-Seven freezes, a thousand memories flashing in his eyes. Forty shivers, her eyes zeroing in on the delicate finger clenching over the trigger.

"We... come from a building about twenty miles from here," she grits out. "It's called Project Chupacabra."

"Never heard of it," the girl says, pressing the barrel deeper into Thirty-Seven's head. Tremors start up in his hand, and Forty growls a warning at the girl. She could kill her easily if she wanted, but the gun complicates things. What kind of specimen carries a gun, anyways?

"Now, Missy, let's give our friends here the benefit of the doubt," Cade placates, gesturing for the girl to back off. She steps away immediately, though keeps aim on the pair.

"It's a testing center," Forty continues, praying that any word she says strikes a cord with the other two. "Where Chupas... er, Suckers are kept and monitored."

"Really?" Cade gasps, astonished. "I ain't heard about that." He still looks suspicious, however, his words careful. He looks down at the mousy redhead digging a hole in Thirty-Seven's skull with a gun barrel, his eyes stern.

"Are they lying?" the girl, Missy, asks. Cade looks at Forty again, really looks at her, takes in her torn clothes and dirty skin and hair. He signals for her to lower the gun.

"They have no reason to," he says. "They're so openly Sucker a blind person could tell. Just some lost, confused folks. It... it can be hard for new blood to get a grip." He knocks the girl's arm away with a swift butt of his palm, not unkindly. She huffs at him, quickly switching the safety on. "Let's show them some hospitality." He gestures for Forty and Thirty-Seven to keep following. Forty does but keeps a wary eye on Missy, who seems to have already taken a serious dislike towards Thirty-Seven. "Now, don't get any ideas about blabbing to people about this place. I'll kill you faster than you can get a word out."

The thick tree trunks part into a small clearing. Here, the smell of Chupa is overwhelming. Thirty-Seven coughs, and when Forty looks back at him he's half transformed. She rests a comforting hand on his back, but this only serves to make him jump. "We won't tell," she says honestly. They're on the run, why would she talk if even speaking to these people is an incredible risk?