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

by Rick Gualtieri

  As they walked, Derek began reading some pre-written dialogue for the camera. It would need to be redubbed later during editing, but it kept his mind from wandering back toward questions he didn’t want to think about.

  Chapter 18

  Kate Barrows was performing inventory in the back of her shop. It was mindless work, and for the most part unnecessary, considering her clientele was small enough that she was well aware of who bought what from her store. However, it kept her mind busy and away from thoughts of the blood on her front porch.

  Her father had volunteered to mop it up. He didn’t seem particularly perturbed by it, being of the mindset that the perpetrator was probably Joel Bean. Joel was a large man, a former lumberjack who had retired once he had lost a few too many fingers. Since then, he had a tendency to spend his days drunk and his nights passed out wherever he lay down. Her father figured he had probably cut his foot while drunkenly stumbling about and then somehow had made his way to their place.

  “What if he’s badly hurt?”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” her father had said. “It’d take a lot more than a bleeding foot to put that lummox down. There’s so much whiskey in his blood that he probably doesn’t need to worry about infection either.”

  Still, Kate was worried. Not so much for Joel, but her dog Gus was still missing. What if her father had been partially right? What if Joel had come over to her place in a drunken stupor and Gus had bitten him? He wasn’t a vicious animal, but any dog could be a little protective of its territory. What if Joel had fought back and hurt Gus? She didn’t think that scenario likely. He wasn’t known for being violent, whether drunk or sober. But still, she hated not knowing. It was causing her mind to start making things up.

  Fortunately, she wasn’t given the opportunity for further wool gathering as, just then, she heard the front door open. She peeked out from the back and saw Grace Clemons walk into the shop. Grace and her husband, Byron, lived at the far end of town, although, considering the size of Bonanza Creek, that was still easily within walking distance of the store.

  “Afternoon, Grace,” said Kate as she walked out. She was on fairly good terms with the Clemons family. Grace and her husband mostly kept to themselves, but they were usually friendly enough, and they always paid up front. None of that mattered much to Kate at that moment, though. She would have probably welcomed a distraction by a mangy coyote walking into her store.

  “Hi, Kate,” Grace greeted her. “Sorry to bother you, but have you seen Mark?”

  Kate knew she was talking about Mark Watson. In a small town like Bonanza Creek, it was easy to know such things. Mark ran a nature blog about the forests and natural resources of Colorado. It was popular with tourists and locals alike, allowing him to make a modest living off advertising revenue. However, that probably wasn’t why Grace was looking for him. Mark Watson was also the closest thing to law enforcement Bonanza Creek had. He served as a part-time deputy. The town wasn’t large enough to warrant a full-time police force, so, technically speaking, Mark reported to the sheriff’s office down in Pagosa Springs.

  “Last I heard, he was out again with that search party,” she replied to the older woman.

  “They’re still looking for those fool hikers?”

  “Yeah. It’ll probably be at least another day or two, assuming they don’t find them first.”

  “I swear,” Grace said, “they should make people take a common sense test before they let them step one foot into the woods.”

  Kate chuckled. If anyone would know, it would be Grace. She and her husband were both avid sportsmen. They spent a good deal of their spare time out hunting elk. Over the years, Kate had heard other stories about the two. The rumor mill would occasionally flare up regarding other less savory activities about the couple. She’d never had any problems with them, though, and usually dismissed it as the gossip of small town folk with nothing better to do.

  “What do you need him for, Grace?”

  “Something killed my chickens,” the woman said, an edge of anger working into her voice. During the off season, Grace supplemented the lack of game meat by raising poultry at her place. She had no problems telling anyone who listened that she and her man were practically self-contained out in their forest-side home.

  “A fox?”

  “Not unless it was the biggest damn fox since the days of the dinosaurs. Whatever it was, it ripped into our coop like a runaway freight train. Tore the poor little things to shreds.”

  “Oh, maybe a bear then?”

  “That’s the damnedest thing, Kate. If it was a bear, we’d have known about it. Byron put up motion detectors last year to scare them off. Anything bigger than a squirrel comes into our yard, they get lights and an alarm.”

  “So, when it went off...”

  “It didn’t. That’s why I’m here now instead of first thing this morning. The damn alarm never went off. At first I thought maybe a fuse had blown, but when I went to check, I found the entire thing was destroyed. Something tore the control box right off the back of our house. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a bear clever enough to do that.”

  “Neither have I,” replied Kate as she found herself confronted with the second mystery of the day.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Joel Bean woke up in the woods. That in itself was not particularly surprising. It had happened many times before, especially when the weather was clear. On those days, he’d bundle himself up, nice and warm, and wander over to Ben Reeves’ place, the Bonanza Creek Bar and Grill which served as both the local tavern and liquor store. Joel was a drunk, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew the forest well from working in the lumber industry for years, before being forced to go on permanent disability, and had no intention of freezing his fool ass to death in it.

  He’d started the night drinking at Ben’s before getting nostalgic for the good old days, as he often did. At that point, he had paid Ben for a fifth of Old Granddad and had wandered off into the night to toast his former profession before eventually settling down against a tree for a snooze. Now, as he blearily looked up and noticed the position of the sun, he realized that perhaps snooze wasn’t the correct term. From the look of things, he’d been out for a good twelve hours, not that it mattered. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to be.

  He pulled himself to his feet, picking up the nearly empty bottle beside him. “Waste not, want not,” he said to himself. He drank off the last few swallows of whiskey before stuffing the empty bottle into his coat pocket. He was a drunk, but he wasn’t a goddamned litterbug. He then unzipped his fly and proceeded to take a nice, long piss.

  Joel hummed some Lynyrd Skynyrd while he relieved himself. He was still urinating when he realized that the humming was all there was. There were no other sounds around him. In fact, in the silence, he sounded comically loud.

  Just my luck, a goddamned bear, he thought irritably as he zipped up. Better scare it off. Joel had come across numerous bruins during his years as a woodsman. The blackies didn’t frighten him in the least. They were usually just as happy to avoid a scuffle and go on about their business.

  “YAW!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, waving his meaty arms above his head as he did so. Joel was a big man, almost six-and-a-half feet tall and well north of two-hundred and fifty pounds. By waving and hollering, he knew he made himself seem like far too much of a hassle for any but the most desperate blackie to tangle with. “YAW! GIT! GIT ON OUT OF HERE!” he shouted.

  He figured if that thing was anywhere near, it’d most likely be pulling up stakes and getting out of Dodge after that display. What he didn’t count on was the screaming roar that answered him. It was unlike anything he had ever heard in his life. It made his yelling seem like little more than a peep in comparison. Whatever it was, it was big and it was close.

  A goddamned grizzly. Sweat broke out on his brow despite the coolness of the weather. They weren’t supposed to be down this far south. It must be all that global warming everyone kept h
ollering about on the TV.

  There came the sound of wood being splintered as something moved in his direction. Joel quickly sobered up and considered his options. There was no use in running from a mad grizzly. You might as well try to outrun a car; a car with six-inch claws. No way was he getting his ass up a tree anytime soon either. He wasn’t in that kind of shape anymore. Since his yelling and screaming had apparently pissed it off, that left only one option. Joel had never tried to play dead for a bear before, but there was a first time for everything.

  He quickly lay on his stomach and put his hands behind his head to protect his neck. With any luck, it would just sniff him and be off. He was well aware of how ripe he probably smelled, thus he was fairly confident there weren’t too many things that would consider him a good meal.

  He was wrong.

  He squinted through partially closed eyes in the direction of the commotion. What stepped from the bushes was no bear. Large feet – only two of them, Joel’s confused mind registered – supported by massively muscled legs entered his field of vision. Before he could begin to comprehend what was happening, he was grabbed by the back of his coat and hoisted into the air. Whatever had a hold of him was insanely strong. Joel was little more than a rag doll to it.

  He had just enough time to notice the glassy red eyes and foam-encrusted mouth before he was slammed face-first into a nearby tree. He hit with enough force to shatter his skull like an overripe pumpkin.

  He died instantly, his alcohol-soaked brain forced from his head like toothpaste from a tube. All things considered, it was a merciful fate compared to what the creature did to his body next.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Elmer Gentry was sitting on his back porch enjoying a cigar when he heard the roar. His eyesight hadn’t been so great for the past couple years, necessitating the use of what he thought of as coke bottles to be able to read his mail or watch the TV. However, his ears were just as sharp as ever. They had never let him down: not while he was lying in a trench in France during the big one, not when he had pulled a tour of duty in Korea, and not in the many intervening years since. Old Man Gentry, as the kids called him – they didn’t realize he could hear them talking; idiots always assumed old meant deaf – looked up when the sound came, a frown furrowing his brow.

  It had been a long time since he had heard anything like it, but even if his mind wasn’t still as sharp as his ears, his eighty-eight years of life hadn’t left him senile or stupid either. He had spent a portion of the seventies living in a commune on the border of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. He had never given two shits about the hippie lifestyle, but had been newly divorced at the time and had decided to take a stab at the whole free love thing that had been all the rage. When he wasn’t busy getting tail from the potheads, he would often be up in the mountains hunting. If those hippies had known he kept his Winchester stored in his tent, they’d have given him the boot. But they were often so stoned; he could have probably fired it off in the middle of the place without too many of them noticing.

  It was during one such hunting excursion that he’d heard a sound not unlike that which reached his ears now. Curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he had decided to check it out. What he had seen that day convinced him to never again go hunting without plenty of extra ammo. He hadn’t personally been threatened, but he knew animals. If ever something like that decided to turn on him, he’d best have enough bullets to put down a small platoon or, if that failed, keep at least one in reserve for himself.

  Those thoughts all flitted through his wrinkled head before the cry’s echoes had even died down. Elmer’s ears were sharp. The sound was similar to the one from all those years ago, but the pitch was different. He had heard enough animal cries to know when something was angry. This sounded that way ... angry and mean. It was a good ways off, but that didn’t mean anything. Elmer had no intention of sitting there like a jackass with a stogie in its mouth while that thing came waltzing in his direction.

  He grabbed his cane and hobbled into the house. When he got in, he barred the door. As he did so, his wife, Vera, came out of the kitchen. She observed him locking things up and shuttering the windows.

  “Storm coming?” she asked.

  “You could say that,” he replied, going about his business. “Now be a good woman and fetch me my shotgun.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Kurt Bachowski was walking along a game trail toward his home, his rifle slung over his shoulder. The day’s catch had been disappointing. Only two of his traps had managed to snare anything, and one of those had been an undersized fox with mange. It couldn’t be helped. Some days were winners, others not so much. He and his brother, Stanley, still had more than enough work ahead of them.

  They lived in a cabin about a quarter mile into the woods west of Bonanza Creek – alone in their own little world, just the way the brothers liked it. They were lifelong bachelors and preferred their solitude. Sometimes it was for the peace and quiet, but more often it was for the fact that prying eyes would have eventually noticed the Bachowski brothers were not always on the up and up as far as the law was concerned.

  As far as they were concerned, though, the law could go bugger itself sideways. It wasn’t like they were hurting anyone. So what if they had a small herbal garden close to their cabin? They weren’t selling the stuff to school kids, so why should anyone care? A few tokes after a hard day’s work wasn’t going to kill anyone. And was it really a big deal if they occasionally poached a few animals above their license limit? Would anyone really complain about a few less coons tipping over their trashcans?

  Speaking of coons, Kurt thought, Stanley should be just about finished skinning those big fat suckers from yesterday. They sold the pelts to a local furrier, then shipped the skulls out to souvenir shops along the highway. It wasn’t big money, but it kept their fridge stocked with beer. As far as Kurt was concerned, it was a good, honest living. They kept to themselves, didn’t bother anybody, and minded their own damn business. If only everyone lived by that credo, he often considered, there’d be a lot less trouble in the world.

  He entered the clearing where their cabin stood. It appeared somewhat ramshackle on the outside, but was sturdy and warm inside. It was a solid dwelling, more than enough for the brothers. As the cabin came into view, Kurt stopped. He didn’t see anything coming from the chimney of their smokehouse out back. Stanley should have been boiling those coon skulls by then.

  Goddamned lazy sonofabitch, he thought, continuing toward his home. He wouldn’t put it past his brother to have drunken their last six-pack and then gone off for a nap. Kurt loved his younger brother, but sometimes Stanley needed a boot in the ass to remind him that work wasn’t going to take care of itself.

  Kurt walked up to their cabin and then, seeing no sign of his brother, decided to go around back just to give him the benefit of the doubt before assuming he was loafing off again.

  He was halfway to the smokehouse when he spotted the remains of fur and flesh on the ground. He went over to investigate. It was one of the raccoons they had caught, or at least he thought it was. It had been ripped to shreds, like someone had tossed the thing into a wood chipper. Forget skinning it – there wasn’t enough left to wrap around a toothpick.

  That in itself was odd. It hadn’t been eaten, just torn apart. Most wild animals wouldn’t do that. A pet was another story, though. Kurt considered that maybe some fool’s dog had gotten away. That hot-titted bitch who ran the general store owned a hound, he remembered. If that were the case, he’d put a load of shot in its ass the next time he saw it. It’d serve her right for not keeping a closer eye on the thing.

  Though he had never married and never planned to – “What’s the useless piece of skin around a pussy? A woman.” was his favorite joke – he was still a man. The thought of the store clerk brought a nice stirring to his crotch. After he found his brother and chewed him a new asshole, he might have to go sit back and rub one out in her name.

  All
thoughts of masturbation fled his mind, though, as he spied the mess lying in the grass about ten yards away. As he got closer, he saw blood and entrails strewn about. It was like something had stepped on a landmine. This was no raccoon. Hell, he noted, you’d need to gut five raccoons to make this mess.