Free Extinct by Ike Hamill Page B

soon.”
    Brad flicked his computer mouse to wake up his monitor. He disconnected from the call.
    He pushed back and put his feet up on his desk. Phil would probably stand by the fax machine, waiting for his transmission, but Phil could wait. Brad knew that Phil would never get approval by the end of the week. If Phil promised you a contract on Friday, he really meant you should expect it sometime in the next month.
    The project had turned into a nightmare. Phil talked him into a five day engagement that turned into six weeks of work. Worse than that, Phil convinced the Cincinnati office to use another contractor so Phil could have Brad all to himself. Brad liked to make himself indispensable, but Phil was turning into a stalker.  
    Now, with the project nearly complete, Phil let the stakeholders change several major requirements. Two major sub-systems would have to be reworked, and one of the supporting applications overhauled. Brad produced an estimate for the change order, and now waited for Phil to get approval for the work.
    “I’ll be lucky if I hear from him by September,” Brad said to the ceiling. “On the other hand, I don’t have to work until September, if I don’t want to.”
    Despite the lower hourly rate, Phil’s insistence on overtime and weekend work netted Brad a huge windfall for June and July. He always kept a decent financial cushion to weather the lean times. Now he had enough money saved to coast for a year without another contract; not that he would ever indulge himself to such a degree.
    Brad intertwined his fingers behind his head and leaned back farther.
    “What if I just quit?” he asked nobody. “What if I just fax over a picture of my middle finger? Phil can get one of the Prague guys to finish up this mess. Sure, it will take him three times as long, but they only charge half as much. He’ll be a hero until they figure out the Prague guys don’t know jack shit about their data.”
    Brad closed his eyes and tried to imagine what his life would actually be like if he quit. He always pictured a perfect life—he would have time to work on the house, clean up the yard, or maybe meet some new people in town. But he knew better. Between jobs he always obsessed about money and trying to find a new job. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy a stress-free life; it would make him anxious.
    He shifted his weight and dropped his fingers to the keyboard. In a few minutes he figured out how to fax his estimate to Phil.
    “Now I just have to wait,” he said to the monitor. The clock on his computer read half-past ten. “Looks like a good day for a pre-lunch walk.”

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    Brad started down the path looking at his feet. This time he wanted to be careful where he stepped. Remembering his encounter with the mystery vines over a month before, he wore his hiking boots and jeans. A clicking sound ahead made him stop and look up. He stood, still a hundred yards from the place where the vine had wrapped around his leg, and listened to the clicking.
    The clicking was loud, and sounded like it came from up on the hill. Whatever it was clicked about twice a second, then sped up to several times that rate, and then slowed again. Brad almost felt hypnotized by the rhythm. He started forward again, keeping his focus on the clicking. Nobody ever came back here except Brad. Even in hunting season, people didn’t stray this far. Dragging a deer a mile through thick woods didn’t appeal to the local hunters.  
    One year a neighbor he’d never met came to the door and asked Brad to unlock the gate so he could get his deer out to his truck. That was back when Karen had still been alive and married to Brad. She stood behind him as he talked to the hunter on the porch.
    Wearing an orange hat and camo shirt and pants, the man had introduced himself and then explained his request, “I’m wondering if you can unlock your gate so I can haul out my deer.” The man stood drenched in sweat