Caretaker by L. A. Graf Page B

barn that smelled more like ozone than animals, and whose wide-open door seemed to suck down light like a ravening black hole.
    Even as Paris watched, the lines of the building hardened and pulled in on themselves, sharpening the image into a knot of menace that only hid inside the shape of a barn. The levels on Kim’s equipment shot skyward.
    “You want some deviled eggs?”
    Paris stepped inside the cavernous building without answering her.
    It felt colder in here, somehow, and as dark as a grave despite the long slats of sunlight filtering between the boards of the walls.
    Something fractal and dusty lurked in a huge mound near the center of the structure, suspending a glitter of mist in the shadow-striped air above it. Hay, Paris realized with an odd little laugh. And the farm girl was right—it didn’t smell very good.
    He felt Kim move unconsciously closer, and Paris squinted at the ensign’s tricorder as the girl tugged at his sleeve from behind.
    “See? Nothin’ but hay.”
    Paris said nothing. Beside him, Kim lifted the tricorder and cocked his head with a frown.
    “There’s a life-form here,” the ensign reported after a moment.
    “Just one.”
    Paris spared a glance for the “life-form” behind them. “Where?”
    Kim turned slowly, his eyes locked on the readout as he swept the small sensor unit across the farm girl, the hay mound, the walls.
    “It’s everywhere,” he said quietly. The tricorder sang as he aimed it beyond the pile of hay. “I’m also reading some kind of matrix-processing device. It may be the holographic generator—Paris!”
    Kim spun, dragging on Paris’s arm as he waved the tricorder toward the barn’s rear wall. “Humanoid life signs!
    Over here!”
    A bolt of lightning seemed to explode through the building, smashing back the shadows. Paris ducked away from the flash, shielding his eyes with the crook of his arm, and felt Kim stumble back against him. On the tail of the blaze, a presence as heavy as thunderclouds swelled into being in front of them.
    Paris pushed Kim behind him, and squinted up at the farm girl as she materialized in their path, eyes aflame. “I’m not ready for you yet,” she announced in an old man’s gravelly baritone.
    The dog’s vicious snarl underscored her words, filling the darkness behind them. Paris heard Kim’s yelp of surprise as he whirled to face the dog, and he slapped at his comm badge before his conscious mind had even pieced all the images together.
    “Paris to Janeway—!”
    He didn’t feel the blow that sent him flying—only heard the explosion of pain inside his skull when the farm girl’s fist made contact, and saw the wave of darkness that crashed up to meet him as he fell.
    She tapped her comm badge in response to the abortive shout.
    “Janeway here.” Dancers and picnickers crowded around her, clapping in time to the banjo man’s tangy playing. She turned her back on them, trying to grab some minimal quiet in the midst of all this artificial revelry. “Paris?”
    Janeway didn’t even let the silence stretch for as long as a minute before waving at the knot of engineers still gathered near the foot of the long porch. “Come on!”
    Rounding the corner of the house, she heard the dog first—its basso roars cascaded out the open barn doors like the voice of a demon accidentally loosed from Hell. It reminded her absurdly of Bear’s pointless fits whenever a delivery man passed too close to the house, and she was stung with an odd mixture of regret and fear. Then Kim’s voice joined the dog’s, sharp with alarm, and Janeway signaled the engineers to fan out as they burst through the doors and into the barn’s dank interior.
    For a moment, her eyes refused to adjust to the new dark. Snarls and banging rolled over her, directionless, and then the world seemed to snap into focus. She glimpsed Kim backed against an empty animal stall with the dog’s teeth latched in his sleeve.
    And Paris, crumpled at the farm