The Rangers' Monster Invasion

1

Wayne Ward checked his investments from his office at the Rangers headquarters. He had become wealthy looking at investments in the future. He had used that to fund his new organization after stopping a hurricane from threatening Texas.

They had stopped a madman from threatening Texas with a hurricane.

He checked the email from the website. He had set that up for individuals to offer jobs for his team. The income paid their salaries, insurance for property damage, and rent on the office. A stipend from the state allowed for bonuses.

He also read the email to trigger his power. It was a quick way to see who was serious and who was trying to fake an emergency.

The fakes got a visit from the local police department instead of a Ranger. He smiled. They usually got a visit from their local department. Sometimes Wayne would send the Tool, and he showed the second way he earned his hero name.

One of the emails sent Wayne spiraling across the Texas scrub. He saw herds of cattle dead, and partially devoured. He pulled out of the vision. That one was a serious job.

He checked the email for contact information. He needed to make a call in person to get a better feel for things.

He also needed to call Cord and Brad to get them on the ground. Their powers might indicate a source for whatever he had seen in the future.

He wondered if he should send a heavy hitter with them. Maybe the Armadillo would be good for something like that. He looked at the page list. Maybe Joe would be better.

He seemed to be at loose ends without work.

Wayne nodded at the number listed on the email. He decided to call. He didn't know anything about cattle raising, but something that could eat a herd couldn't be good in his opinion.

Cord could find the source and Joe could take care of it. Brad was their wheel man in case something went wrong.

He dialed the phone and waited for an answer. He hoped things hadn't already went bad while he waited. He didn't want to send his guys into a situation that already needed the Tool, or G-Man to deal with it.

"Hello?" The voice sounded young, maybe a daughter.

"My name is Wayne Ward, and I work for the Rangers." He had a feeling he was talking to the writer of the note. "I have an email for assistance."

"That's right." The prospective client sounded like she had thought the website was a hoax until he called. "We're having problems with something after our cattle."

"I'm going to ask three of our associates to come down." Wayne picked up a pen and post it paper. "I need an address from you."

"You're sending someone by today?" She sounded excited.

Maybe no one had believed her before he called.

"As soon as I can. I'll need the address." Wayne wrote down the information and tore the paper off the pad. "I am going to call the men and get them moving. I suppose they will get there in the afternoon sometime."

"Thank you." He heard something close to a laugh. "I really need the help."

"Don't worry." Wayne hung up.

He had said don't worry, but he was worried enough for the two of them. Sometimes seeing the future was not that great.

He called Joe first. Cord and Brad had lives that made them easy to find when he needed them. Joe tended to move around from hotel to hotel in Dallas.

Sometimes he forgot to turn his phone on when he was in the middle of a move.

"What's up, Warning?" Joe sounded chipper. It might be at the prospect of a job.

"I need you to look at a problem for me." Wayne leaned back in his chair. "I need you and Cord to look at some cows."

"Cows? Moo cows?" Joe didn't sound so chipper now.

"I'm hoping it's something like a simple animal attack." The scryer decided he should put the Moko on notice. "Something low key. If this thing escalates, I need someone there to hold things down until the rest of the guys can get there."

"This is going to be bad, isn't it?" Joe sounded ecstatic.

"I hope not, cause it's just going to be you, Dowser and the Biker." Wayne saw more dead cows spreading across the prairies of Texas. His guys had to contain it.

"Pick up?" Joe might be able to get to the scene on his own, but Brad was faster.

"Give me an address." Wayne noted the pick up spot. Joe was within yards of his last known address. "I'll get the others moving."

Wayne hung up. He dialed Brad first. The Biker could pick the others up as soon as he got on the road.

"Talk to me." Brad used to work as a delivery driver. He still did that on the side when jobs as a wheelman for the Rangers were few.

"I need you to pick up Joe and Cord, Brad." Wayne laid out the situation. He trusted Brad to retreat and get help if things went bad.

"Animal attacks seem out of our line of business." Brad also liked to take things easy when he could.

"This could be bad." The Warning didn't have to explain how his own power worked. "That's why I am sending you three. I'm going to call the Moko and put him on alert. If things get really bad, I'm going to get the Tool on this."

"Where do I pick up Joe and Cord?" Brad knew his power made him a secondary player, but it also made him the transporter specialist of the team.

"I'll have to call Cord to let him know." Wayne gave him Joe's address. "Call back after you pick up Joe."

"On it." Brad cut the line.

Wayne called Cord's number. The man acted as a dowser for people looking for water, and for the police trying to find people. He supposedly had a job out in the middle of nowhere.

"Cord Liner." The Dowser's ability to find things was crucial to tracking down the thing hunting the cows.

"This is Wayne, Cord." He heard the snapping to attention over the phone. "I need you to check out some animal attacks for me."

"How bad is it?" Liner seized on the fact that Ward was putting him on the job for something trivial like a terrier.

"Could be a major problem. I'm sending Brad to pick you up." Wayne wrote down the address. "I'll let him know where you are and he should be there in a few."

"I'm in the middle of something." Cord sounded distracted. "Hopefully, I'll be done by the time they get here."

"Thanks, Cord." Wayne turned to the last number on his list.

The Moko had the ability to take two different animals and combine them into one animal with the strengths of their parts. He also had a lot of experience with animals in general. He was perfect for something like this.

Wayne planned to put him on the move in the general direction of the case. If they needed him, he would already be on the way.

He planned to call the rest into the office so they would be ready in case his scouts couldn't stop things from getting worse.

The timeline shifted as he looked at the mail again. He hoped he wasn't sending his friends into something they couldn't handle.

"Yes?" Noah Chen's voice cut through the static in his brain.

"This is Wayne Ward, Noah." Wayne hoped he was doing the right thing. "I sent three of us down to look at a problem with cattle. I would like you to get in position in case they need to be bailed out."

"The wheel man is one of the three?"

"Yes." Ward smiled. "If things get bad, I told him to fall back."

"I understand." Noah seemed to be smiling. "Where is this problem?"

Wayne gave him the address.

Wayne looked at the rest of the jobs waiting. They seemed important, but he only had eight other men and had committed half of them to this one problem.

He sipped his coffee. Time will tell him what he needed to get done.

He'd better put the rest on alert.

2

Joe Pusser stood on a street corner. He watched the neighborhood around him. It wasn't uptown, but it was home. He put his hands in his ragged coat as he waited for his ride.

He saw the car appear a few moments later. He had been watching the street. It looked like the front of the car rolled on the asphalt, then a few seconds later the back end caught up.

You didn't feel anything inside the ride, but it was weird seeing it from the outside.

"No bike?" He smiled as he leaned in the passenger window.

"I know." The Biker's helmet covered his expression. "I'll have to change my superhero name."

"The Warning said something about cows." Joe got in, shutting the door after he settled down.

"Animal attacks." The Biker looked over his shoulder before pulling out in traffic and heading for his next pick up.

"Like coyotes?" Joe was a city boy. Coyotes were a common thing from what he knew about the prairies of Texas.

"That's what we're supposed to find out." The Biker checked the address on his clipboard. "Maybe it's some kind of mutant bunny."

"That I would have to see." Joe watched the street rearrange itself as the driver looked for the right road. "That's really spooky."

"What is?" The helmet didn't turn away from the road ahead.

"The way the road changes when you drive." He wondered what would happen if he put his hand outside when the car did that thing.

"I forgot what that looked like." He waved a gloved hand. "Sometimes if I look at it, I get lost."

"How lost?" Joe wondered how you could get lost driving around.

"I wound up in some town in New Mexico asking for directions." He laughed.

"Okay." Joe had not been out of the city before he started working for the Rangers. His brief forays in that regard were more than enough for him. Traveling to another state was like traveling to the moon as far as he was concerned.

"Here's the street." The Biker slowed the car, checking the addresses.

"There's Dowser." Joe nodded at the older man walking along the side of the road. He held a forked stick in his hands like the handles of a bicycle.

"I wonder what he's looking for." The Biker pulled to the curb beside their colleague. "What's up?"

"I'm looking for a kid." Cord Liner turned his sharp eyes on the two in the car. "She's this way somewhere."

"What does this kid look like?" Joe got out of the car. He put his hands in his coat as he looked around. He had cleaned up some, but still looked like a bum and out of place in the neighborhood.

Liner took a photo out of his pocket. He handed it over. He knew Joe had some kind of gadget, but didn't see how it could help in this case.

Joe memorized the face before handing the photo back. He pulled the sleeve of his coat back to reveal a thing like a watch on his arm. He had worked on the design during one of his changes so it produced a more stable change when he activated it.

He pressed the button on the front of the watch. A chemical surged into his bloodstream. He hissed at the pain, but rode it out. It was the price of his power. His skin changed, becoming mottled. His eyes grew together into one big eye taking up most of his head. He blinked his two lids as he adjusted to his new vision.

"This way?" He looked down the street. "This way."

He led the way down the street, pausing when he realized he couldn't walk through a house. He went around, Liner in tow. He stopped in front of a treehouse. He frowned as he looked up into the play castle.

"I think you should talk to this girl." Joe stepped back. "She looks hurt to me."

"I think your new face might be a problem." Cord stuck his stick in a sling and went to the ladder at the base of the tree.

"It's temporary." Joe wondered if he would have a change that wouldn't stop.

"Kaylee Ann." Liner paused at the door to the open structure. "My name is Cord Liner. Are you okay?"

"I think she's hurt inside, Dowser." Joe supposed being stuck with X-ray vision wouldn't be so bad. It would make dating harder than it was now.

He would have to start dating first.

Liner crossed the threshold. He checked the girl. He didn't have any way to help her beyond first aid. She might die before he could do anything for her.

"I got this, Dowse." The Biker called as he jogged from the company car. He had followed along the street. He stopped at the base of the tree. "Hand her down."

Liner picked the girl up and lowered her to his friends. The Biker jogged to his car. She would be at the hospital in a matter of seconds. The wheel man was faster than the response time of an ambulance.

Cord grabbed his phone and called the hospital's emergency room. He needed them ready to get to work on the girl. He didn't know if they could do anything, but he was going to try.

The Biker's car vanished with the roar of the engine.

"What do we do now?" Joe blinked his unearthly eye.

"She didn't hurt herself, did she?" Liner gave details to the nurse who answered the door. The ruckus of the Biker arriving carried over the phone. "What do you think we're going to do?"

"Think." Joe stopped. Maybe the soup was making him smarter. That would be a nice side effect to write home about. "We think."

Liner looked at the altered bum. He never thought this guy would think about anything but himself. Now he saw something there that was helping him keep his own emotions in check.

"Think?" Liner pulled his stick from his sling.

"And we call the police." Joe thought about that. The cops had done nothing but harass him when he was a criminal. They rarely gave him the benefit of the doubt now. Authority was what was needed at this moment. "That's the right move."

"I know a guy." Cord called his friend and told him the situation. He gave the man the address. "He'll meet us at Kaylee's house."

"Better hurry then." Joe started walking. "This change is almost over."

"Don't worry about it." Cord followed at a slower pace. "All we'll need is my stick and some cops to haul our bad guy away."

"Thinking?" Joe paused. He shook as the juice burned out of his system. He reached up and found his old face back.

"I don't see why not." Liner smiled slightly. He called and checked on the girl. The Biker said he wasn't allowed to stay with her since they weren't family. The doctors were working on her as far as he could tell. "Stay there. We'll let you know when we'll need you. She should have someone there to look after her until I get things straightened out with her parents."

Liner waited on the street until he saw his friend arrive with a couple of uniforms. Joe put his hands in his pockets and tried to be invisible without using his watch to try to get that power. The Dowser explained things to his friend. The man frowned, but nodded his agreement.

They went into the house. They came out, following the stick. It took them to the next house. A boy tried to run. The police took him down.

Joe nodded at the older man when he came into view. Now they knew who did what. The official machine would do something back.

That didn't rule out some street justice down the line.

3

Brad pulled his car over outside the gate of the ranch. He let it idle as he looked around. Everything looked peaceful now.

"It doesn't look too bad." He raised the visor of his helmet for a clear view.

"Let's talk to the owner." Liner looked out of the side window next to him. "I doubt it's a false alarm."

Joe said nothing. A ranch was a new thing for him. He avoided animals where possible. So he was in a new place, getting ready to deal with animals he usually would walk away from for a job that he had gotten after years of living on the edge of society.

He wondered if he was the right one for this job.

Brad drove under the welcome arch and up the long driveway to the main house. Flat green stretched out on both sides of the gravel road. He pulled to a stop next to two pickups parked in front of the brown structure. A barn and a corral were further down the road from where he parked.

The three Rangers got out, scanning the grounds for trouble.

"Let's talk to the owner and find us a starting point." Cord pulled his hat on. "Then we can call the Warning and let him know he was wrong."

"That's better than telling him it was worse than he thought." Brad looked at some cows chewing the grass in the distance.

"It's always worse than he thinks." Joe put his hands in his pockets and followed the dowser to the front door. He stood back as the other man knocked.

He didn't want to be standing too close in case there was some trouble when the door opened.

The door opened. The woman looked at both of them with raised eyebrows. She saw an older man in a long sleeved shirt, jeans, and a hat. A forked stick was in a sling under his arm. The other man was a scruffy individual in a long coat and sneakers.

They didn't look like two men who had saved central Texas from a hurricane.

"You called the Rangers' line about some animal attacks." Cord smiled. "That's us."

"You're not what I expected." She frowned at them.

"What happened to your cows?" Joe was never what anyone expected. He could live with that.

"Something has killed a couple of them." She pointed to a fenced area beyond the barn. "The rest have bites on them."

"Do you mind showing us?" Cord stepped out of the way.

"Come on." She closed the door behind her and started off the porch. She glanced at Brad. He waved back, but didn't remove his helmet.

"Who's that?" She indicated the wheel man with her thumb.

"Our driver." Joe slouched along at the back of the group. "He's okay."

"Can you fix this?" She glanced at the two men following her.

"We'll have to look at the scene before we can make promises." Cord pulled out his stick. "I'm pretty good at finding things, and Joe is a wild card. If we can't fix this with what we have, we'll get more of our guys to help out."

"I hope so." She paused at a gate in the fence. She opened it and led them out in the field. "There is Camden. See the bite in her leg?"

Cord frowned as he walked up to the cow. It gave him a look but didn't run. He bent down and looked at the wound. It looked like an open bite mark to him. He frowned because he doubted a coyote did something like that unless it was some kind of mutant giant.

He wanted a rifle at that point if the bite was a tiny example of what the animal attacker could do.

"What do you think?" Joe kept back from the cow. He looked at it like it was a major menace that needed to be put down.

"I think we are dealing with a some kind of big dog." Cord stepped back. "What did your vet say?"

"She never saw anything like it." The rancher waved a hand. "I put some poultice on it but the edges are almost rotted."

"We'll look around for whatever did this." He smiled. "Just go back to the house and wait for us there."

"You want me to send your friend up?" She indicated the car in the distance.

"No." Joe shook his head. "We might need to be rescued."

"Don't worry." The dowser gave him a look. He might have kicked his comrade if the woman hadn't been watching. "We're just going to see if we can find it first before we try to catch it."

Joe nodded. He doubted that catching it would be high on the list if they did find the thing.

She watched them over her shoulder as she walked back to the house. She doubted she should leave them alone with the cows. She frowned as Joe waved at her.

"Let's get started." Cord held up his stick. He pointed it across the prairie by the handles. He turned in a circle to take a reading. "This way."

He started off.

"Do you really think it's some kind of dog?" Joe watched the cows as they walked. They chewed the grass and looked back at him. Some of them had worn spots on their limbs.

"It's something." Cord walked behind his stick. "I have never seen anything quite like it."

"What do we do when we find this dog?" Joe kept his hand next to his watch. He didn't know what he would get, but anything was better than nothing when dealing with livestock.

"It depends on if we can handle it." He paused as the stick shifted to his right a little. "If we can't, we might have to get the Tool, or G-man, down here to give us a hand."

"That's great." Joe glared at a little cow. The little ones were the meanest.

"Don't like animals?" Cord continued on.

"No." He gave a wide berth to the little cow. "Why?"

"That's a baby." The dowser kept walking. "What you should be looking for has horns."

"That's good to know." Joe looked around for any cow with horns. They all seemed to have horns.

"It looks our dog came through the fence over there." Cord pointed at the white lines in the distance.

"What's the tape mean?" Joe relaxed as they left the small herd behind.

"The fence was electrified at one point." The dowser turned to follow the fence line back to the barn with his eyes. "Our dog was never shocked enough to stay away."

"Or electricity wasn't enough to keep it out." Joe frowned. "How much does it have to have for the cows?"

"Not much." Cord started along the line he set himself. "Animals shy away from even the littlest zap."

"So our biter is not afraid to get shocked." Joe frowned at the sound of that.

This was turning into some kind of monster hunt.

Joe didn't want to eaten by something that liked cows.

"Or it couldn't feel the shock through its skin." He shrugged. "Maybe the line is off and it took advantage."

"Maybe we should call the Moko down here to figure out what it is before we run into it." The man of many faces liked that better than searching for the monster and getting eaten.

"We will." Cord paused at the fence. "Don't be such a scaredy cat. You have a watch that lets you turn into monsters."

"It lets me turn into random monsters." Joe kept an eye on the landscape. "That's not a big help if you turn into a stick man in front of a wood chipper."

"All right." Cord inspected the gaping hole in the fence. "I give you that."

He shook his head. It looked big enough for him to climb through without snagging his clothes.

Something big had come into the pasture. Calling the Moko looked like a good idea the more he thought about it.

"We'll go forward to at least try to find the nest." Cord's stick pointed beyond the pasture. "We'll also call the Moko to make sure he's on the way in case it's some kind of animal we don't know."

"That sounds good to me." Joe looked back the way they had come. "We should let the Biker know we're going ahead."

"We wouldn't want to let him get worried." Cord pulled out his phone.