by Phil Maxey
“How’s Jason?” said Zach tentatively.
Brandon went to reply, when the angry man that Zach saw at the medical center, spoke first. “He might be brain damaged, and it’s because of one of your men!” the man stepped forward when he was shouting, causing Brandon to turn and put his hand on his chest, stopping him from moving any further. He then turned back to Zach.
“He had swelling on his brain from the blow your man gave him. The only reason all of you are still here is because your Dr. Tanner, operated, and gave him a chance of life. I’m going to let all of you stay here until we know how it’s going to go with young Jason. If he survives, then we can have a conversation about what happens next. If he doesn’t, well, we will cross that bridge if we come to it. I understand that you and some of your people want to go out after this crazy SOB?”
Zach could feel Fiona’s reaction to Brandon’s words and he spoke before she got the chance too. “Yes.”
“You do realize, even if you do find him, and don’t die trying, he won’t be able to stay here, right?”
“We know.”
“Well okay then,” Brandon and those with him, stepped back, clearing a path. Zach, Fiona and Abbey walked past them, and down to the outside gate that was already slightly open. As they walked through the small gap, the large wooden partition slowly closed behind them with a loud thud. The snow had stopped falling, and the forest around them sat in silent judgment.
CHAPTER 11
The pain in Cal’s limbs was so intense, that it was all he could do not to cry out, but to do so would mean certain death. As he sat mostly buried in snow, watching the ten-foot high bipedal creature walk past him, he wasn’t sure if his hands and feet would ever be of any use to him again. When he first saw the large ape like thing, which had a combination of straggly dark-brown hair and lizard like scales a few hundred yards ahead of him, he was sure he had been spotted by it. Quickly, he jumped into a small recess and covered himself with snow and hoped the creature’s senses would be confused by the complete lack of body heat, coming from the strange disturbance in the ground.
As he watched the impressive beast traipse across the snow and out of eyesight, he went to move his arms and legs but nothing happened. For a moment all he could feel was his head on his neck and nothing else, like his limbs had been removed and he was sitting in an icy grave. This is my punishment.
Again he struggled and slowly the snow started to move around him and a tingling sensation pulsed along his limbs. He pushed with his legs, and wriggled and finally fell onto the ground, looking up to the canopy of pine trees and a single whiteness that formed the sky above. The snow had been pretty relentless, but for now it had stopped. His eyesight was always a step above most peoples, but the snow and mist around him rendered that useless, so he knelt and listened. No sound came back. The misty sun was now beyond it’s zenith, so he knew he hadn’t much time left to reach some kind of structure to give him protection from whatever emerged in these woods at night. He also knew from looking at the maps they had before that heading north meant moving up the mountain, and even though there would probably be less E.L.F’s up there, surviving in those conditions would be hard even before the Cascade, so south it was.
After thirty minutes he spotted a road and walked down onto it. Even covered in fresh snow, it’s flatness felt like a carpet compared to the uneven bumps of the forest floor. He kept to the edge of the road, to be able to jump back into the forest if needed. He wasn’t sure if the young man would live, and if the town’s people decided to go after him, Zach and Fiona probably wouldn’t be in a position to stop them. Being a sniper he was trained in covering his tracks, but with the ground being so impressionable, he wasn’t sure if he had succeeded.
Eventually as the sun grew dangerously close to ducking below one of the nearby peaks, a two-story wooden house appeared through the gloom, close to a gas station. His legs were tired, but thankfully the static in his head had stopped and he approached it thankfully. A sign stated that this was a ski camp. Further along he could see what remained of the gas station. The canopy that once covered the pumps was now sitting on the ground covered in snow and the pumps themselves tilted at angles. Ignoring them, he looked up at the darkness behind the mostly broken glass of the windows of the house and ran across the snow and onto the front porch. Even with the padding of the white encrusted ice under his feat the planks further down creaked as he tentatively walked forward and icicles fell from the beams above.
The front door lay open, with snow heaped up against it and into the lobby. A staircase to the second floor sat opposite, with the entrance and rooms which would have once been welcoming, split off on both sides. Cal could see further rooms down the side of the staircase, but for now, just finding a way to close the front door seemed a good course of action. He carefully dropped his backpack on the frosted rug and kicked away at the small heap of snow stopping the door from closing. After each stab with his boot he stopped and listened for a reaction in the darkness inside, but none came. Soon the door was swinging, and he pushed it shut, as he did he noticed it had begun to snow again.
From the outside it looked like a large house, with many rooms, but as he stood in what was left of the day’s light, the shadows made the walls feel closer. Reaching into his backpack he pulled out a candle and lit it. He hadn’t realized how cold it was inside, but the light from the candle illuminated his breath, drifting away from his face.
He waved the candle towards each of the side rooms. A few chairs lay on the ground on their sides, but apart from that it looked fairly untouched. He stepped forward and looked down the side of the stairs to what lay beyond. The minimal light provided by the flame exposed a door with a small circular frosted window and a sign “Kitchen.” Slowly he walked along the passage and gently pressed the door to the kitchen open. It creaked slightly, and then hit something causing it to roll across the smooth stone floor. Again, he waited for a reaction, but nothing responded. Pushing the door further open, he walked into a good-sized rectangular kitchen, which was bathed in a dull blue light. The back of the lodge must have been built partially against a slope and the kitchen window was completely blocked by a wall of snow. Pots and pans law strewn across the floor and many of the wooden cupboards were open. He didn’t have much hope of finding any food, but he looked anyway. After a few moments of searching he found a half empty packet of noodles and a small can of olives. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the noodles, but he quickly opened the olives and gratefully devoured them.
After placing the can on the kitchen top, he instinctively turned the stoves nob, and to his amazement, a flame emitted from one of the rings. Almost in a panic he quickly turned it off, and looked around him for sign of movement. When he was sure there was none, he opened the cupboard below the stove and found a gas cylinder. Must still be some gas in it. He decided that he would use it sparingly to warm the kitchen, especially as it seemed a good spot to defend with there only being one viable entrance in and out. He was also concerned that if the house warmed too much it would bring unwanted attention from the things outside. At least with the back window being buried, there was no way the light from the stove or his candle could be seen. However before settling down, he needed to secure the rest of the rooms.
He placed his backpack on the floor and walked back into the passage, with his gun in one hand and the candle in the other. He had a quick look in the side rooms again, and then tilted the candle up towards the second floor above him. Away from the momentary warmth of the kitchen, he felt chilled to the bone standing at the base of the stairs. He put his boot on the first step and waited for the wood to creak, but luckily it remained silent. He then proceeded to walk up the stairs. Getting the short distance to the top took more of his energy than he knew it should and he sat on the top step, looking left and right along a corridor with doors off of it. The right corridor had something at the end of it, some form, but from his sitting position he couldn’t quite make
out what it was. Standing, he lifted his gun to point at the form, and held out the candle in front of him. The further forward he walked the clearer the form became, until finally he saw it. A large human shaped shadow stood there. Cal stopped, his head felt light. The form in front of him was similar to the figure in his dreams. But here it was in reality, or was it real? The floor below his feet started to move like he was on an elevator, he grabbed at the wall, knocking the candle to the floor and plunging the dark figure back into the shadows. Desperately he slid to the ground, trying to keep his gun pointing in the direction of where the shape was while reaching for the candle, which had now extinguished. The drumming had returned to his mind and as he knelt in the darkness clutching at his skull he pleaded for the pounding to stop.
CHAPTER 12
Zach and Fiona were both knelt down examining the brushed snow.
“I think it could be his,” said Zach. Fiona looked unsure, and Abbey looked nervously out into the sea of frosted pine trees around her.
They had headed west since they picked up his trail near the wall. Even in the fresh fall of snow, Cal had done a good job of making his tracks hard to find, but Zach had spent years tracking people in a previous life, and Fiona had spent more than a few nights on missions in dense winter forests. To Abbey though it all looked the same. At least she can watch the woods while they watch the ground she thought.
They reckoned he had been gone for an hour before they started looking. The young guy, Jason, has been carefully placed in a small shack, so it was obvious at least to Zach that it had not been Cal’s intention to kill him, just to put enough space between himself and any would be pursuers. Without being inside the semi-warmth of the shack, Jason no doubt would already be dead.
Zach clicked on his radio to try and get an update on Jason from Bass, but static and crackling blurted from the speaker. “Even if Cal had took his radio with him we wouldn’t of been able to reach him on it anyway.”
Fiona stood and looked into the mist around her. “Might have been able to triangulate his position though if he did.”
Zach frowned and put his radio back in his side pocket. Standing, he too looked around himself into the trees. “It’s hard to say which way he went. I think we have four hours of daylight left, maybe less when the sun drops behind one of the peaks around here. We have to choose, we go back now, or we go forward and try to find somewhere to bed down for the night.”
Fiona kept looking into the forest. “You know my view.”
Zach looked at Abbey, who looked back at him and he knew her choice would be to keep going too. “Let’s keep heading west, hopefully we will pick up a path which will have some ski cabins or something.” The idea of Tinley moving further away flashed into his mind, but he pushed it away.
After what seemed an age of walking in snow that swallowed you, they came upon a creek with water forcing it’s way through cracks in clear blue ice.
Zach knelt down and started to fill his water bottle. “Fill your bottles, might be a...” before he could finish, a loud crunching noise shattered the silence around them and some snow fell from the branches of nearby trees.
They all froze in place and Zach immediately raised his gun in the direction of the sound, but it was too late. A large dark humanoid figure sprung from between trees, grabbing and flinging Fiona with one movement. She spiraled through the air and hit a trunk. With its next sweeping movement, it grabbed Abbey’s leg, sending her falling and flailing backwards to the ground. It then charged away. During all of this Zach kept trying to get a shot off, but the creature moved so quick and the two women were in danger of being hit.
Once the creature’s back was exposed, he fired a number of rounds into it. Some bullets could be heard skirting off and splintering bark, but some also hit with a thud, and the creature staggered, letting go of Abbey’s leg. She had been screaming but her voice had been lost in the confusion. He ran closer and fired again, this time the creature threw it’s arms up to shield it’s face, and then turned and ran off with the speed of a sprinter.
Zach ran up to Abbey. She sat up shivering and screaming. He knelt down next to her, and looked at her leg. There was some blood from small puncture wounds, but nothing more.
“Are you injured anywhere else?”
Abbey looked at him, wide eyed, and silently shook her head.
“Can you stand? I need to get back and check on Fiona.”
He helped Abbey to her feet. She put some weight on her bloodied leg, but could slowly walk. “Okay, you need to hold onto your gun. I’m going to go and check on Fiona.”
Abbey had completely forgotten about the Glock handgun she had in her side pocket, and pulled it out, looking at it like it was some strange exotic object. She immediately took the safety off, and pointed it in the direction the creature ran in.
When Zach got to her, Fiona was sitting up against a trunk of a tree.
He knelt down. “Are you injured anywhere?”
“I’m finding it hard to move my arm, I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder.”
Zach helped her carefully remove her coat, and top, and saw straight away the strange wrong shape of her shoulder. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I’m going to fix that, you ready?”
Fiona agreed.
“You think you can not make any noise?”
She threw him a sarcastic expression.
“Okay, here we go.”
Zach held her arm and pulled. She grimaced and groaned slightly, and then let out a deep breath.
“I think it’s back in. Thanks. Did you get it?”
“I put half a magazine into it, then it ran off.”
Abbey appeared behind him, with her hand still holding the gun. She then knelt down next to Fiona, and gave her hug.
Fiona flinched, and then smiled. “Hey watch the shoulder.”
“When it threw you, I thought you were done for. I thought we all were,” said Abbey.
Zach stood up and looked around them. The forest had returned to its state of deafening silence. “That’s it, we have to go back.”
Fiona slowly got to her feet using the trunk as her support. “Do what you gotta do, but I’m finding Cal.”
Zach looked surprised. “That was just one of whatever is out here! Even if he’s still alive, there’s a good chance we won’t be if we stay out here!”
Fiona, walked past him, brushing his shoulder and into the dense tree’s. It wasn’t long before she wasn’t visible anymore.
“Zach, you can’t let her go alone, she’ll die out here!”
Zach shook his head. “This is a bad idea, but fine,” he walked a few feet forward then stopped and turned to Abbey. “Fiona has her own reasons for trying to find Cal, but he’s not been right for a while. Tanner tried talking to me about him at the station, but I ignored her.”
Abbey straightened her back. “Then we need to find out what’s going on.”
Zach and Abbey caught up with Fiona as they came across a road.
“Look!” Fiona ran forward to some regularly spaced indentations.
Zach and Abbey joined her. “Harder to cover tracks when walking on the road,” said Zach.
“Least we know he went this way,” said Abbey looking down at the hardly noticeable variations in the snow.
Zach looked up to the watery sun. It was only a few degrees from being hidden by a mountain.
“We only have maybe twenty minutes left of good light, we need to find shelter.”
Fiona looked exasperated. “Yes, but we now have his tracks, any new snowfall and they are gone, we have to keep following them for as long as we can.”
“Fine, but the first structure we come too, we stay there till first light, agreed?”
Fiona dismissively nodded, and they all walked along the snow packed road, following the off-color holes amongst the powdery white.
It wasn’t long before the greyness around them turned darker, and the pine needles and trunks all started to merge, with only the road bein
g clearly visible.
Zach took out his radio. “I’ll take the lead, the glow of the radio should be bright enough for us to see, but not to attract attention. We need to find shelter soon.”
Fiona and Abbey fell in line behind him, walking only a few feet from each other. After another twenty minutes, Fiona spotted a break in the trees up ahead. As they walked forward in the almost complete darkness, cracks and creaks broke out around them.
“We need to find shelter, now!” whispered Zach.
They all started running, as the crunching of wood seemingly followed them. The dark shadow of a two-story house loomed across a glowing white snow covered lawn. Running as fast as their legs would carry them, they crossed the lawn and jumped onto the front porch, pushing the door open and closing it behind them with a thump.
Zach held his radio up so the glow would illuminate a small area around him, and in the gloom he saw Fiona and Abbey out of breath leaning against the walls. He then moved into a side room and carefully peered through the iced up window to the area they just ran across, but there was only the complete black of tree shaped silhouettes against a dark grey sky.
“There were things around us, did you hear them?” whispered Fiona.
Just as Zach went to reply, Abbey started screaming. A dark form was in the passage area with them, and it was grabbing at Abbey.
A rasping voice could just be heard amongst Abbey’s screams and scuffling. “Make it stop, make it stop.”
Zach dived at the shadow form, sending them both tumbling to the ground. He instantly felt the cold clammy skin of a human, and brought his radio’s glow up to the persons face, it was Cal. But this wasn’t the Cal that they left New Mexico with or even the man they saw the night before, this was something disheveled and pitiful. For a moment Zach stopped trying to hold Cal’s flailing arms, in shock as to what he was looking at, but then he grabbed both and held them down.
