Bigfoot Hunters (Tales of the Crypto-Hunter Book 1)

by Rick Gualtieri

  As they continued onward, she thought she heard voices; however, she kept silent about it until she was certain. The woods could play tricks on one’s ears. The chattering of squirrels could sound like a conversation as the sound bounced around. Now, though, she was certain as to what she was hearing. Those were definitely voices, and she could tell Paula had heard them, too.

  She opened her mouth to let out a warning. The possibility of being shot was still a concern. However, before she could do so, the other girl bolted, the hope of being rescued far outweighing any caution. Danni muttered a curse and went after her, chasing Paula for several yards in an attempt to slow her down.

  She had just managed to grab hold of her jacket when they burst through some bushes and found themselves staring down the barrel of a very large gun.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Derek silently cursed. He had been only a few ounces of pressure away from blowing the girl’s head off. It was only his instincts that had saved her. A jumpier man would have perforated her – them, he saw now there were two – full of holes.

  “Jesus Christ!” he spat. “You have no idea how close you just came to a face full of .44’s.”

  The girls paid him no mind, though. Their eyes immediately went to the enormous corpse lying on the ground before them. Before they could do more, they were practically knocked over by Harrison, Rob, and Allison.

  “Danni!” Harrison yelled, grabbing his sister and lifting her off her feet. Allison joined in, too, putting her arms around them both.

  Rob’s greeting for Paula was a bit more subdued. He gave her a quick hug before turning and dragging her over to the dead monster. “You gotta see this,” he said excitedly. Paula, for her part, was too stunned to do much in the way of protest. The girl’s mind had finally reached overload. The lights were on, but nobody was home.

  Danni finally pulled away from the embrace. She looked around, first at the body, then at the others. A look of horror crossed her face. “What about Wild Feather and Greg? Did this thing...”

  “They’re both fine,” Harrison reassured her.

  “Well, Greg is,” Allison countered. “Phil’s kind of a basket case.”

  “Phil?” Danni asked.

  “I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s just say we’ve both been a little stupid lately.”

  Danni had no idea what she was talking about, but she didn’t care right then. All she knew was that she, her brother, and their friends were all still alive. That was what mattered.

  It was only then she realized exactly how weary she was. She leaned against a tree to try and catch her breath. Harrison stepped forward, a look of concern on his face, but she waved him away. “I’m fine. Check on Paula. I’m more worried about her.”

  He hesitated for a moment. Physically, she looked okay, but mentally ... well, it would be a long time before any of them were totally fine again. Now, though, was probably not the time for them to all start talking through their troubles.

  Finally, he nodded and turned to find Rob – noticing him still talking to his nonresponsive girlfriend. Harrison sighed, noting his roommate was utterly clueless, then walked over to the couple. “Rob, why don’t you let the doc check on her?” he said, motioning to Mitchell.

  “Medic,” Mitchell corrected, still tending to Chuck. “I’m a registered nurse. Never got around to that doctorate, unlike our esteemed host over there. Anyway, I’m just about finished here. Bring her over.”

  Mitchell stood from where Chuck still rested. He had bandaged up the injured man as best as he could. The tracker didn’t appear to be in immediate danger, so Harrison walked Paula away from her overly excited boyfriend and toward the medic.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Rob, for his part, didn’t really notice. He was still studying the corpse. After a moment, his brow furrowed as a thought popped into his head. “Hey, I just realized we never smelled it coming.” He took a deep breath through his nose. “This thing doesn’t smell great, but it doesn’t reek either. Aren’t they supposed to stink?”

  “That’s the skunk apes down in Florida,” Derek said conversationally, as if discussing the weather. “Same species, but their fur is usually matted down with stagnant swamp water. Makes them smell like month-old rotten eggs.”

  “But everyone says...”

  “That’s just media hype and hysteria, kid. People assume they’re supposed to stink, so when they see one their mind fills in the gaps after the fact. Suddenly, they’re sure they smelled it coming a mile away.”

  “Either that, or they’re getting a whiff of the load they just dropped in their pants,” Chuck replied from where he lay. He laughed at his own joke, then groaned in pain.

  “That, too,” Derek replied.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A few minutes later, Derek walked back over to his medic. “How’s the girl, Mitch?”

  Mitchell pulled something out of his pack. “She’s in a bit of a fugue right now. Scared beyond the capacity for rational thought, would be my guess. Go figure.” He turned his head and shouted, “Hey kid! You might wanna drag yourself away from the squatch and get your butt over here.” Then to the rest, he announced, “Everybody, hold your ears ... this could get loud.”

  Rob walked over, a sheepish look on his face, and put an arm around Paula.

  Mitchell cracked open the smelling salts and waved them under her nose. For a few seconds, there was no reaction, then her eyes began blinking rapidly. A moment later, a high-pitched scream of “OH GOD!” came bubbling out of her throat. Despite Rob’s efforts to comfort her, several more shrieks escaped her lips before she finally broke down in pitiful sobbing.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sound can carry far in the woods if it bounces just right, especially if things were as deathly quiet as they currently were. Paula’s screams echoed through the forest for quite some distance.

  Eventually, they reverberated through a small hollow, within which was a crude bed of leaves and moss. Something stirred within as the sound hit its newly sensitive ears. The fever had gripped it only hours earlier. It had lain down to sleep, hoping the bad feeling would pass. It hadn’t. It had instead worked its way further into the creature’s brain, slowly eating away at its peaceful nature.

  Its eyes opened. The noise was causing it pain. For some reason it couldn’t understand, the only thing it wanted to do was find the source of the sound and kill it.

  PART 2

  Chapter 16

  Derek instructed Chuck to take the kids to where they had left Francis and the others. He wanted them all back together – no stragglers this time.

  Chuck, unsurprisingly, balked when Harrison tried to help him up for the journey. He still had an Army mentality and didn’t like the thought of relying on civilians, despite being one ever since retiring from active duty. However, that mindset also meant that Derek, as his commanding officer, was easily able to overrule him.

  Derek and Mitchell hung back, crouched over the corpse, examining it. It was the unglamorous part of the job, one that others were usually surprised to see him doing. Whenever Derek introduced himself in conjunction with the show, people usually assumed he had some bogus mail-order PhD in cryptozoology. The truth, though, was somewhat more mundane – if still a bit surprising to some.

  Derek had a doctorate in zoology and had begun his career as a researcher, studying the habitat of endangered howler monkeys in the Amazon. His aspirations hadn’t been any more grandiose than finding a way to save a harmless creature whose home was slowly being destroyed. Ironically, he was now tasked with killing other endangered, albeit far less harmless, species. Funny what fate and a chance one-in-a-million meeting can do to a person’s life, he often thought.

  Now was not the time for a stroll down memory lane, however. He shook his head and got back to the task at hand. “What do you think, Mitch?”

  “The big fellow was definitely not feeling at the top of his game.”

  “That’s probably a good thing.”

 
“Not arguing.”

  “I’m telling you, though, it looked sick to me.”

  “I know that, Derek. We’ve already been over this.”

  “Great apes can get a lot of the same diseases that humans do, you know that.”

  “Yes, and if this thing were a gorilla, I’d be all over that theory. But it’s not.”

  “I’m well aware. Trust me, I’d enjoy facing down a pissed off gorilla a lot more. But still, the question remains: what the hell was wrong with it?”

  Mitchell stood up and stretched. He retrieved his pack and started pulling equipment from it. “Beats me. As I said before, maybe it ate something.” Derek started to open his mouth, but Mitchell held up a hand. “But I’m going to find out for certain.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “I can use the mobile lab in the van to run most of the tests.”

  Derek shot him a smirk at the mention of it. Mitchell had argued against the van when it was first offered to them some months back.

  “And yes, you told me so. Don’t rub it in. Anyway, the CDC has an office in Denver. I can link up with their computers and probably have some answers in three or four hours.”

  “It’ll take us at least six just to get back to it. We left it in that town.”

  “Fine. Then we’ll have answers in about nine hours. Now, do you want to waste more time arguing about it, or do you want to hand me my drill?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  They stepped from the bushes. For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Then the knowledge that their group was whole again, that they had all survived, began to sink in. Greetings, as well as cheers of triumph, rose up from the little clearing. The feeling was euphoric ... for most of them.

  Harrison, Danni, and Allison went to check on Greg. Though obviously still in pain, his spirits were high now that he saw the others were all right. He even began to joke about how surviving a fight with bigfoot with nothing more to show than a busted arm was a new source of pride for him. They all laughed when Greg immediately started flirting again with Danni. She rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling, too.

  Rob, too, was ecstatic. With the danger over, he began pelting his captors with question after question regarding sasquatch and whatever other mythical monsters came to mind. He was firmly in the throes of what Harrison would have deemed a major nerdgasm. Fortunately, both Francis and Chuck were likewise in good moods and indulged Rob’s eagerness ... for a few minutes, anyway.

  Unfortunately, the good cheer was not universally shared.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Get away from me.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry I hit you. I...”

  “What part of fuck off did you not understand?” Phil asked, turning his back. After a few moments, Harrison took the hint and walked away.

  Phil rubbed his aching jaw. Even so, the pain from the fist-sized bruise adorning his cheek paled in comparison to the damage he had suffered inside. He was ashamed of himself for how he had acted, but his feelings for the others had been forever darkened by the experience.

  They had embarrassed and belittled him in his time of weakness. As far as he was concerned, his charade had been little more than harmless fun, yet they had treated him like a pariah. Now he remembered some real lessons he had learned growing up. On the streets of Chicago, disrespect could not go unanswered.

  There would be no forgiveness.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Rob had been so enthralled that he failed to notice his girlfriend wasn’t holding up very well at all. That Paula was bone-tired was the least of her issues. The encounter with the creature had shaken her to her very core. There was no room in her beliefs for such a thing to exist. It was an affront to her faith. Surely a just and loving God wouldn’t allow such an abomination to walk this earth. Yet it had been real, and in the end it had been bullets, not prayer, which had defeated it. What that told her, she still wasn’t sure.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Derek and Mitchell rejoined them a short while later. Soon the entire group, seven campers and their four escorts, were setting off on the long trek back to camp. Once the small talk finally petered out and everyone began to concentrate on the hike ahead, Harrison asked, “So what happens now?”

  “We walk out of here and get our injured the medical attention they need,” Derek replied, keeping pace with him.

  “I kind of figured that. I mean, what happens to us? You did technically put us under arrest.”

  “You’re not under arrest,” Derek replied. “You’re just in custody until we can get all the paperwork sorted out.”

  “‘Paperwork’?” He lowered his voice so the others couldn’t hear. “I really hope that’s not some code word for shoot us all in the head and bury the bodies.”

  Derek snorted out laughter. “You watch too many movies, kid. If that were the case, we’d have just let that thing eat you for lunch, then mopped up later.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that.”

  “It’s the truth. When I said paperwork, I meant it. We’re talking signed affidavits swearing your silence on the matter ... under penalty of treason.”

  “Don’t they usually execute people for treason?” Danni asked from behind, where she had been eavesdropping.

  Derek turned his head toward her and smiled. “Not unless you were selling nuclear secrets to that squatch.”

  “So then, what if we refuse to sign?”

  “This is the U.S. government we’re talking about,” Derek explained. “Believe me, they have a way of making your life miserable. You could find yourself on the no-fly list. Cops might suddenly show a lot more interest in you on the highway. I don’t handle the details. I just know that the suits in D.C. have a way of getting what they want.”

  The siblings appeared to consider this. Finally, Harrison said, “So what was that earlier about interviewing us for the show?”

  “Exactly that. You’re all eyewitnesses. Outside of a few of the more sensitive details of what happened, it’ll make for great TV. The Adventure Channel loves that sort of thing. Adds drama to the show.”

  “We’ll wind up looking like crackpots, is more like it,” Danni groused.

  “There’s that, too,” Derek replied. “No offense, but it fits right in with the affidavits. Think about it. If you appear on a show like mine, ranting about bigfoot, who’s gonna believe you – aside from the other crackpots?”

  Harrison chuckled and Danni gave him an eyeful. “You think this is funny? Mom and Dad are gonna think we’ve been doing drugs out here.”

  “Well...” Harrison replied, thinking back to the previous night. “Anyway, that’s not what I was laughing about. I was laughing because it’s so damn perfect. It basically hides the truth in plain sight.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” Derek said with a tone of admiration. He was finding this Harrison character to be likeable. The kid was smart and kept his cool. If they ever needed an intern for the show, he’d have to give him some consideration.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Phil continued to sulk alone near the rear of the group. He kept back from the rest as far as their chaperones would allow. He had no desire to be amongst them anymore. He kept his eyes down and his mouth shut. His darkening thoughts were only interrupted by a female voice saying, “Hey.”

  He looked up to find that Paula had joined him. She had bags under her eyes, and her hair was unkempt. She looked as if she had just been chased by the devil, which wasn’t too far from the truth, now that he thought of it.