Plunging into the trees, Hank’s legs pumped beneath him as he ran. He ran faster than he ever had in his life, adrenaline and fear pushing him on. The sounds of gunfire and screams had long stopped behind him as he raced down the hill, not even sure which direction he was heading in. The bullet that struck his forehead caught him so completely by surprise that he didn’t even have time to wonder where the pain he felt in that last instant before death came from.
“Got him, Mr. Hewes,” Hunter announced.
“Mr. Hickman?” Hewes asked.
“The drones’ sweep over the area the gunfire came from isn’t what it should be. That weird interference is still playing havoc with them sir, but I can tell you whoever was with him must be either gone or dead. I’m not getting anything from that area now, whereas before there was a lot of activity.”
“Really?” Cassidy smirked. “I never would have guessed from all the guns blasting away and the screaming.”
“We knew the rangers would be coming after us,” Hunter said. “Maybe they ran across whatever it is we’re after up here.”
“Or it ran across them,” Hewes countered.
“We’re down two men and still no closer to finding out anything,” Hunter stared intently at Hewes. “Maybe we should…”
“We are not leaving here until my son has been avenged,” Hewes’ tone made it clear there would be no arguing with him. “And Hunter, we have learned that there is indeed a lot more in these hills than either just bears or even Sasquatch. What happened to Michael is proof of that.”
“Doesn’t mean we’re any closer to finding whatever it is,” Hunter watched Cassidy dragging the body of the man he had just shot over from them to get a better look at it.
“Yep,” Cassidy confirmed, “This guy was a ranger alright. Check out his uniform. Pretty impressive shot there too, Hunter. Right between the eyes.”
“Mr. Hickman, were you able to tell how many others were with him?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Hewes. The best I can tell you is there appeared to be somewhere around seven or eight people, then everything went crazy with the data stream. That guy there,” he pointed at the corpse, “came running our way, and then everything was just…gone.”
“I’d like to know how they were able to get ahead of us,” Hewes moved over to where Jeremy stood. “Can you call up an aerial map of this area?”
“Uh, not exactly,” Jeremy admitted.
Hewes frowned.
“But I can get you satellite footage,” Jeremy grinned with pride.
“Do it. Wide angle. I want to see these hills and everything around them.”
Jeremy called up the image.
“What’s that there in the center?” Hewes’ fingertip stabbed the center of the screen. “Is that a lake?”
“Yes sir. Is that important?”
“Can you superimpose an image of all the known areas where people in this area have went missing in the last few years?”
Jeremy almost seemed insulted by the question. The fingers of his right hand danced on the pad’s keyboard. The image lit up with a circle of red dots in the hills surrounding the lake.
Hunter and Cassidy had moved closer to get as good of a look at the small screen as they could without intruding on Hewes.
“I guess we know where we’re headed now,” Hunter said.
“Agreed,” Hewes nodded. “You and Mr. Hickman work out the shortest path there. I…I need a few moments.”
“Understood,” Hunter answered, watching Hewes head away from the group. “Just don’t go too far, sir.”
“I won’t,” Hewes promised.
“What’s with him?” Jeremy asked as soon as Hewes was out of sight.
“He and Michael were close,” Hewes explained. “Can you imagine losing your son and future daughter-in-law only to go after their killer and lose two more people in the process?”
“About that…” Jeremy started.
“Forget it, Jeremy. We’ve lost people before on jobs like this. It happens. Sure, the way Michael went out was one of the freakiest things I’ve seen, but that don’t mean we can’t handle whatever is up here. We are not bugging out unless Hewes gives the word.”
“I hear ya, man,” Jeremy said, “but that wasn’t like any demonic possession I’ve ever seen. That was just…”
“Real,” Hunter finished for him. “I know. Doesn’t change anything, though.”
“Without Michael though, I mean,” Jeremy argued, “how are we supposed to fight whatever’s in that lake? If it’s supernatural, those guns you two are carrying might not be of much use.”
Cassidy snorted. “Ain’t nothing on this Earth that don’t bleed and die.”
“That’s my point,” Jeremy’s voice rose. “What if whatever we’re after isn’t of this Earth?”
“Come on,” Cassidy spat back. “I’ve seen Shoggoth blown to pieces and so have you! Remember Dunwich? This is what we do.”
“Michael said this thing was more powerful than anything he had ever felt before. And how did he put it, dark and hungry? Maybe this time, if you’ll forgive the expression, maybe we have bitten off more than we can chew.”
All three of them went quiet as Hewes returned. “Gentlemen?”
“Sir,” Hunter said, “I think the most direct path to the lake is actually the one we are already on. If we just keeping going straight, we can make the hike before sunrise.”
“Excellent work, Hunter,” Hewes beamed. “Let’s not waste any time then, shall we?”
Hunter took point once more as the group moved out at a much faster pace than they had been traveling before.
“Uh,” Jeremy stood his ground. “Shouldn’t we at least check out the area all the gunfire came from?”
“Why?” Hewes asked. “As you said, Mr. Hickman, everything there is either dead or gone and I, for one, am done wasting time. Now if you’d be so kind as to join us.”
With a sigh and a quick glance in the direction of the area he had suggested they should investigate, Jeremy lowered the drones’ control pad and hurried after Hunter and Cassidy.
“What in the devil is that smell?” Jeremy gagged. “It’s like rotting bodies, fish parts and stagnant water all jumbled together.”
“It’s the lake,” Hunter told him. “We’re getting close to it.”
“About time,” Cassidy remarked.
“Strange,” Hewes remarked.
“What’s that, sir?” Hunter frowned.
“I assumed we would have encountered the Sasquatch by now. We should be deep inside their territory. I would have expected them to make some effort at preventing us from making it this far.”
“You’re right, sir,” Hunter glanced around the trees and shadows surrounding them. “This doesn’t fit at all with what we assumed their behavior would be like.”
“Could be they’re letting us through to the lake,” Jeremy suggested.
“It certainly appears that way, but why?” Hunter shrugged.
“That is a good question indeed,” Hewes turned to Jeremy. “Are the drones picking anything up nearby?”
Jeremy lifted his pad to check and his eyes went wide with shock. He appeared to double check something on the pad’s screen before he answered. “I’ve lost the drones, sir. It’s like they just fell out of the sky. I can’t even get a lock on their homing beacons.”
“That’s unfortunate, Mr. Hickman,” There was a hint of anger in Hewes’ tone, “I was expecting better from you.”
Jeremy didn’t reply. There was nothing to say. He didn’t even have a guess as to what had happened to the drones.
“Guess we’re back to the old mark, eyeball and our gut feelings,” Cassidy said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“That’s it!” Jeremy snapped, flinging his pad onto the ground. It shattered into pieces from the impact. “I’m done! All of this is crazy! We’ve lost two people, killed a ranger and we haven’t even been out here a day yet!”
“Calm you
rself, Mr. Hickman,” Hewes warned.
“You calm yourself!” Jeremy raged. “I’m getting out of this place while I still can.”
“How?” Hewes asked calmly.
“What?” Jeremy shouted.
“How are you going to do that, Mr. Hickman?” Hewes stepped closer to Jeremy. “It’s dark, the drones are down and you’ll be alone. Do you really think you’ll make it very far before something in these woods finds you?”
“Man’s got a point,” Cassidy laughed.
“I…I…” Jeremy stammered.
“You’ll do nothing, Mr. Hickman, except continue to accompany us and simply stay out of way if that’s the best you have to contribute.”
Jeremy looked from Hewes to Cassidy and finally to Hunter. Finding no help from them, he stared at Hewes.
“You’re insane.”
“Be that as it may,” Hewes gestured at Hunter. “If you would lead us on, good sir.”
Reluctantly, Jeremy followed Hewes and the rest rather than deciding to be left behind.
The four men entered a large clearing with Hunter in the lead.
“Holy…” Hunter muttered as they saw the bodies bound to the trees along its edges. Hewes stared at the carnage in silence. Even Cassidy was at a loss for words.
Jeremy bolted, running, full out, back the way they had came. No one tried to stop him.
The fact that the corpses weren’t human somehow made things worse. Each of the Sasquatch was horribly mutilated. Their arms spread wide reaching over their heads. Pieces of jagged wood had been driven through their hands like nails to hold the bodies in place. All of them had been gutted. Their intestines lied in piles, like coiled snakes, in front of them. Their rib cages were cracked open and spread wide, their hearts missing. And their eyes were nothing more than empty, gouged out sockets.
Hunter counted over three dozen of the beasts along the circle of trees surrounding the clearing.
A few of them were female and there were two young Sasquatch as well. One of the young ones was only the size of a man and the other, even smaller. Suddenly it was clear why the Sasquatch hadn’t tried to stop them from approaching the lake. The Sasquatch were all dead. Hunter refused to believe the beasts had went down without a fight, but there was no sign of what had killed them. He crouched, taking a look for tracks. As he suspected, the beasts hadn’t been killed here. They had been slaughtered, or at least subdued somewhere else and then dragged to this spot. He found himself hoping the poor creatures had died before their bodies had been ravaged like this.
While Hunter was checking out the tracks, Cassidy had moved closer to one of the bodies and was busy inspecting it. The body belonged to one of the larger males. Something had snapped its arm above the elbow and the white of bone protruded from underneath the thing’s brown, red smeared hair.
“Whatever killed them was strong,” Cassidy commented to no one in particular. He poked at the beast’s corpse with the barrel of his shotgun. “It had claws, too. Look at this!” He called to Hunter.
Hunter came over, his gaze going to the spot on the beast’s shoulder that Cassidy had indicated. Three long slash marks separated both the beast’s hair and muscle in long groves that resembled those of a human who had been mauled by a bear or some other large animal.
“It wasn’t a single killer that did all of this,” Hewes announced.
“No, it wasn’t,” Hunter agreed. “There are tracks everywhere in this clearing and they ain’t human or sasquatch either. Whatever did this walked on two legs, like a man. That much I can tell.”
“Deep Ones,” Hewes muttered the name and then said it again more loudly. “Deep Ones. They’re what did this. It all makes sense now.”
“Wanna explain it to me then, boss?” Cassidy demanded.
“A Great Old One or one of its true spawn is in that lake,” Hewes told them. “The Sasquatch weren’t randomly killing people or hunting them. They were trying to protect us and our world. They didn’t want the thing in that lake getting loose or its taint spreading beyond these hills.”
“So these things here,” Cassidy tapped a piece of exposed skull on the Sasquatch corpse he and Hunter stood next to with the barrel of his shotgun, “they were the good guys?”
“If the concept of good and evil and can be applied to the Sasquatch, then yes, Mr. Cassidy, they were. They must have been fighting a war with the thing in that lake and its servants for decades, trying to keep it in check.”
“Didn’t end well for them,” Cassidy glanced around at the circle of corpses.
“It won’t end well for any of us, Mr. Cassidy if that thing gets loose in the world of man,” Hewes said.
“Scott,” Hunter said, addressing Hewes by his first name, “I’ve worked for you a long time. I’d like to think we’re as much friends as employer and hired muscle.”
Hewes watched Hunter carefully as the Special Ops trooper turned mercenary and bodyguard spoke.
“I know you’re hurting from Dave’s death, and I know how bad things are going to be if that thing in the lake gets loose, but Scott, look around you. If it could do this to all these Sasquatch, what chance do we really have of stopping it?”
“If we don’t Hunter, who will?” Hewes asked.
Jeremy ran and ran and ran. Coughs wracked his body. His fingers dug his inhaler from the pocket of his jacket without stopping but at the exact moment he got it free, he stumbled over the exposed roots of a large tree. It went flying from his grasp, bouncing along the forest floor. Jeremy’s eyes went wide in terror but he still didn’t stop. He kept pressing himself onward. Every muscle in his legs felt like they were on fire, and each breath became harder and harder to force into his lungs. Jeremy wasn’t a soldier like Hunter. He was just a tech junkie and geek. If he survived the night, he promised himself he would settle down, take a nice comfortable IT gig somewhere, and give up crazy crap like this job for the rest of his life. Sure, he would miss the money and all the cool toys, but they weren’t going to be any good to him anyway if he was dead.
A hunched over, humanoid thing, shambled out of the trees ahead of him directly into his path. Jeremy skidded to a halt, barely managing to stay on his feet as he fought against his own momentum. The thing’s eyes glowed yellow in the moonlight. Its naked form was covered in slick looking scales and long, razor-like claws extended from the three fingers on each of its hands. The sound that came out of it wasn’t a roar so much as some kind of twisted, gargling noise. Jeremy swung the rifle he carried off his shoulder and aimed it at the monster.
“I just want to leave!” he wailed at it. “Let me go and you’ll never see me again.”
The monster responded with another gargling cry that showed the rows of pointed teeth within its mouth, and came bounding at him.
“Frag!” Jeremy screamed, pulling his rifle’s trigger and holding it tightly. His rifle bucked in his hands as a stream of automatic rounds dug into the monster’s chest. It lurched backwards from the force of their impact. Jeremy’s rifle clicked empty as the creature finally toppled and lay sprawled out on the forest floor.
A coughing fit took Jeremy to one knee as he threw the empty weapon aside. By the time it ended and Jeremy started to stand up, there were a dozen more of the monsters surrounding him. Jeremy stayed absolutely still as they watched him, none of the creatures moving either.
Jeremy knew he was dead. The things would never let him leave here alive. All that was left to him was deciding how he was going to go out. Oh, what the Hell? Jeremy thought and reached for the butt of the pistol holstered on his belt. The things were on him before he ever cleared the holster. One set of claws slashed away most of his nose, blinding one of his eyes in the process. Another set raked across his back as he howled in pain. He felt cold, wet fingers wrap around his left wrist just before they jerked his left arm completely free of his body. Blood sprayed from his shoulder where his arm had been attached. He managed to finally stand up as one of the monsters plowed into him, knocking hi
m to the ground once more. Jeremy landed on his back as the monsters fell on him, tearing at his flesh and ripping his body apart… then there was only darkness.
“We need to leave,” Hunter told Hewes. “Now.”
Hewes shook his head. “We can’t, Hunter. Do you think that thing in the lake is going to let us just walk out of here? We’re a threat to it now that we know it exists. It knows we’ll tell the world about it. Odds are it’s young for one of its kind or it would have killed us already,” Hewes paused, letting his words sink in. “Either we keep going onto the lake and find a means to kill it, or it sends its servants to kill us long before we ever get out of these hills.”
Hewes shrugged his backpack from his shoulder and knelt, digging through it. He produced a black, jewel-encrusted dagger and raised it up for Hunter to see. “My father gave me this when I turned eighteen. The engraving on its hilt is an Elderich sign. Its enchanted. Over the years, Michael worked hard at adding to the strength of its enchantment. It may not be able to truly slay whatever is in that lake, but it can send it home Hunter. I promise you that.”
“Really?” Cassidy raged. “An enchanted dagger? That’s the best you got?”
“What were you hoping for, Mr. Cassidy? A tactical nuke?” Hewes snapped. “Yes, it’s the best I have and it may be not only our, but the world’s only hope.”
Cassidy’s demeanor shifted like that of a man who had became unhinged. “Reckon it’ll have to do then. What are we still wasting time for here anyway? We got ourselves a, what did you call it, ancient one’s butt to kick.”
“Great Old One,” Hewes corrected.
“Whatever,” Cassidy shrugged.
“How close are we to the lake?” Hewes looked at Hunter.
“Based on how far we’ve raveled, it should be just right down there,” Hunter pointed through the trees.
Hewes nodded. “Let’s go end this then.”
The three men walked out of the clearing and into the trees. In less than a half hour’s time, they were out of the trees again, staring out at the placid surface of a small lake.
Sasquatch Lake Page 4
