Darkest Night

by James Cherry

  “Just stay under the trees,” Welsh called out to his men as he dodged from tree to tree, “That thing is too big to get us in here.”

  ***

  They made good time and were only a couple of kilometers away from the extraction point when a light breeze picked up. Welsh ordered a stop as the unmistakable whistling of wings beat overhead. The trio went still and scanned the tree tops, weapons aimed towards the heavens. Suddenly the loud popping of limbs breaking permeated the stillness, followed by the sound of leaves and branches raining through the trees.

  “It’s in the trees,” hissed Welsh.

  Welsh scanned the trees in earnest with his night vision, but didn’t see any immediate threats. He turned to Fernandez and tapped him on the back as a signal for him to move.

  Fernandez nearly jumped out of his boots but regained his composure quickly. He ran to the next tree craning his head upward as he ran. Welsh turned to Carter.

  Carter?

  Carter was gone.

  Welsh panicked. His training and experience went out the window and he ran like the devil himself was after him.

  Maybe it was.

  As he passed Fernandez he grabbed the young specialist’s arm and pulled him along like a child dragging a stuffed animal. He released his grip after a few seconds once he was sure Fernandez got the message.

  ***

  Fernandez instinctively knew something had happened and didn’t offer any resistance. As he ran, he dropped his heavy pack and most of his ammo. He was able to keep up with Welsh for the first hundred yards, but lost him in the pitch black of the dense jungle.

  Fernandez began to panic as he frantically searched for Welsh. He used his night vision goggles to pierce the inky darkness so that he could easily pick out the path which Welsh had taken. Broken limbs and crushed plants showed the telltale signs of his passing.

  After a few minutes of running, he finally came upon a small clearing and slowed. He spied Welsh crouched beside a large tree, his head weaving from side to side as he scanned the sky. The clearing was forty meters wide and would only take a few seconds to cross.

  Welsh seemed to note his approach and pointed to the tree line on the other side.

  Fernandez nodded in response.

  Without saying a word, Welsh wheeled around and raced across the clearing in a full out sprint. When he reached the other side, he turned to cover Fernandez, pointing his weapon to the sky.

  Fernandez knew he was going to make it as the extraction point was only a few hundred meters away. He took a deep breath and burst from the tree line, sprinting across the clearing.

  ***

  Welsh saw the movement from his left, swooping in exceptionally fast down the length of the clearing. He swiveled his rifle in preparation to fire, but before he could react, the shape was on top of Fernandez. He watched helplessly as the creature grabbed Fernandez in its talons and bit into the back of the young man’s neck. Fernandez began convulsing in death.

  Staff Sergeant Bo Welsh stared at the creature through his night vision goggles, it’s a horrific visage would be forever burned into his memory.

  It had huge, bat-like wings, which were easily fifty feet in length from tip to tip. A long serpentine body, which was laced with spines along the length of its back, was coiled about the body of Fernandez in a protective cocoon. The infrared goggles made the eyes appear to glow with a pulsing evil red light.

  Welsh quickly switched his goggles to starlight to get a better look at the creature. The eyes. He could see them clearly now.

  Evil.

  Cold.

  Calculating.

  The creature stared back at Staff Sergeant Welsh, unmoving, with its prey clutched in its claws.

  Chapter 1

  Doctor David Burch laid his thermal imaging binoculars down on the ground and stretched his cramped leg. Dressed in full camouflage, he had been sitting perfectly still in the midst of prickly scrub brush and cacti for several hours.

  He was a self-proclaimed cryptozoologist, however, in academic circles he was considered to be an eccentric madman. But he hoped that the data he would collect on this expedition would change the world’s views of his research.

  He vividly remembered the day that he spotted a large hairy creature walking upright upon two legs, a creature he assumed to be a Bigfoot. His respectable mammology fieldwork took a back seat to his not so respectable cryptozoology research soon after the sighting. His obsession with cryptozoology had earned him the nickname of "Crypto David".

  He stood from his seat on the ground and stretched. His middle aged and portly frame was not used to such hardships. His spare tire was due to his many years of sitting behind a desk, drinking beer, and making incessant phone calls in order to try and get someone more eccentric than himself to finance an expedition.

  He brushed his thin brown hair back and removed his thick glasses in order to mop the sweat from his brow. Even at night, the heat and humidity of the Mexican desert was unbearable. Sweat trickled down his forehead in steady beads and his glasses repeatedly fogged up. He placed his glasses back on his face and looked at his watch. He noted that it would be daylight in another hour; it was just another unsuccessful stakeout.

  He sighed and reflected upon the events that had brought him and his team into the heart of Mexico to hunt for the elusive chupacabra, or "goat sucker".

  He had received a call out of the blue by Texas Oil Baron, Ronald Haymond. The multimillionaire and his wife had reportedly had a close call with the elusive chupacabra. Not only had he lost his dog during a vicious attack, his wife bore scars on her back as well.

  In a desperate search for answers, Ronald Haymond had searched the internet and came across Doctor Burch’s web site on mythical creatures. This had prompted the call and the subsequent two years worth of funding for an expedition to locate and study the chupacabra.

  It did not seem to matter to Haymond what the creature was and he really didn't care. He had told the doctor that he was determined to capture one of the creatures that had taken his dog and maimed his wife. Most importantly, he wanted to bask in the fame and glory to come from capturing a mythical beast.

  Doctor Burch gazed over at Marty Fellows who lay asleep in the fetal position. Marty had been his first recruit for the expedition. He was twenty-six years old with quick wit, sharp intelligence, and armed with a Master’s Degree in Zoology. The young man was muscular and stood at five foot eleven inches tall. He sported a full head of sandy blond hair and had green eyes. This combination made Marty an instant woman magnet.

  The doctor also knew that Marty was extremely stubborn, and a skeptic of his work. As a graduate student of the University of Wisconsin, Marty had taken a class under the tutelage of the doctor and he had argued and debated his whole way through the semester. Their lively debates were something the doctor had actually looked forward to.

  The doctor grinned, sometime during the night Marty had rolled up under a large thorn bush. His grin quickly turned into a wicked smile as he kicked the young man in the rear.

  Marty promptly sat up, right into the thorn bush. He flailed around briefly before he realized he was hurting himself more by swatting at the bush. He promptly eased back down to his back and rolled out from under his prickly nemesis.

  "Ow," Marty exclaimed in a very small voice.

  Marty's antics had awakened Doctor Ayako Masuda who slowly sat up rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Anything happening?"

  The diminutive Japanese lady had been a student of his many years ago as well. At five foot three inches tall, her big heart more than made up for her short stature. She spoke almost perfect English with only a hint of an accent.

  As an exchange student, she had graduated at the top of her class in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin and had taken several classes under Doctor Burch’s tutelage in the fields of biology. Very bright, no-nonsense and highly respected, Ayako was a force to be reckoned with in the scientific world.

  Docto
r Burch relied upon Ayako's sound advice and skepticism on his projects from time to time. She was a bit harder to persuade to take an absence from her teaching position to traipse across the world chasing myths, but a healthy check from Ronald Haymond quickly changed her mind.

  "Nothing going on," answered Bo Welsh as he turned to face Ayako. The night vision goggles he sported gave him the appearance of a Cyclops, with a single dark lens jutting out from the center of his face.

  As usual, Bo had been wide-awake all night with his back to a tree. He turned and stared intently up at the night sky, his head slowly scanning from side to side. He tightened his grip on his shotgun and moved it higher up his lap.

  Staff Sergeant Bo Welsh was the sole survivor of an encounter with something during an ill-fated raid on a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. He had the buzz cut blond hair and drilling brown eyes of a typical poster soldier. His square jaw and broad shoulders along with his six-foot frame made him a very imposing figure.

  Much like Ronald Haymond, Bo had sought out Doctor Burch during his search for answers. Through their contact, they had formed a friendship, and even a kinship, even though the doctor didn’t have any answers as to just what had attack Bo during that fateful night.

  Doctor Burch turned to face Ayako and snickered, "Just Marty, fighting with a thorn bush."

  "Yeah, someone kicked me into the damn bush," growled Marty. He gave the doctor the best go-to-hell glare he could manage.

  "I did no such thing. You rolled under that bush during the night. I can't help it you just happened to sit up into the thorn bush when I awoke you," prodded the doctor. He laughed for a moment, his round belly jiggling like jelly. He suddenly stopped laughing and added in a more serious tone, "It will be daylight soon, we have work to do."

  "Bah, screw you," yelled Marty. He held up his middle finger and began to nurse his minor wounds.

  Marty's shout awakened Ron Haymond. The last member of the team was, of course, Ronald Haymond. Ron felt that since he was spending his money, then he should be allowed to participate. The doctor did not protest at all.

  Ron rolled over onto his belly and pushed himself off the ground pushup style. He retrieved his Stetson from a low hanging branch and firmly pulled it down over his shaven head. A long black handlebar mustache wrapped itself tightly around his upper lip. The millionaire was fit, but six nights on the ground was taking its toll.

  "Damn crick in my back. Crick in my neck. Crick in my ass. I think every bone in my body has a crick in it,” drawled Ron in his thick Texas accent.

  Marty laughed out loud and mimicked Ron by stooping over and holding his back.

  Ron eyed Marty and continued with a hint of displeasure in his voice, "You think we could take a break and stay in a Hilton a couple nights?" His face suddenly lit up and he added, "I will get us the finest suites. Room service, a hot bath, air conditioning, soft bed, cold beer and medium rare steaks for everyone."

  Marty abruptly stopped his mimicry and perked up with interest. "Cold beer?" he cheerfully replied, "I'm in."

  "You can go. I'm staying out here. Seems like there is a pattern to these attacks. The local villagers claim it happens about once a month. It's been almost a month and the attacks can happen any time now. Also, my data seems to point to the fact that most, if not all attacks, happen during the new moon," replied Doctor Burch.

  Marty piped in sarcastically, "I think these creatures only come out when no human is around. They can sense us with ESP and just avoid us. That would explain why no one has ever taken a picture of them. You ever notice when someone does get a picture of a monster of any type, the picture is always fuzzy and distorted? I think it's the magical aura around them that make cameras inoperable. Maybe it's the electromagnetic shielding from their UFO guardians." He laughed evilly and stuck out his tongue.

  Ron glared at him and opened his mouth for a retort, but Bo silenced Ron with a sharp chopping motion of his hand. Without a word he pointed to the moon. Everyone looked up to see the small sliver of moon peeking out from the black expanse of sky.

  "So?" Marty replied.

  "Tomorrow night will be the new moon. It will be the darkest night of the month. It was pitch black when I was attacked.” Bo turned away as if to end the conversation. He stared off into the night, his face stony and emotionless.

  Ron turned to Marty and said, "You know, Bo is right. My dog was carried away on a new moon. At least I don't recall seeing a moon that night. Maybe it was just overcast." Ron shrugged. "Anyway, it was darker than a coalmine. Eerily quiet, too. My wife and I were sitting by a campfire, and my dog was running around the edge of the camp when it attacked. This thing had a wingspan of a good ten feet." Ron stretched is arms out to emphasize his point. "I didn't get a good look at it, because it was so dark at the edge of the camp, but my wife saw it up close. Swears it was a big bird with feathers, but had teeth instead of a beak. Left three-inch gashes in her back when she tried to save our dog." Ron curled his fingers up claw-like and raked the air.

  "What I saw had a fifty foot wingspan and didn't appear to have feathers at all,” interjected Bo flatly.

  Doctor Burch's facial features suddenly became animated as an idea popped into his head. "The similarities are striking though, how they both seem to hunt on a new moon." He pointed into the sky and jabbed his finger at the moon with every word. "Only on the darkest nights do these creatures come out." A sudden placidity seemed to overcome the doctor and he paused, staring into the night, momentarily lost in thought as his mind worked out the possibilities. He began speaking slowly, as if he were speaking to himself, "In all the credible data I have collected, this seems to be the case in every instance. I just wonder if maybe these creatures might be related though. A whole new undiscovered family of Aves."

  Marty obviously couldn't resist the chance of making an ass out of his former mentor for his slip-up. He said smugly, "Actually Doc, Aves is a class. It goes like this, Kingdom: Metazoa, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Aves, Order: Falconiformes, Family: Accipitridae, Genus: Pandion, Species: Pandion haliaetus." He looked at Ron and continued, "In reality, that or another from the family of Accipitridae is what attacked your dog"

  The doctor looked hotly at Marty. Sometimes his arrogance was a bit annoying. "Marty, I know that. And no, I don't think an osprey is what attacked Ron's dog. You ever saw an osprey or any other Accipitridae with a ten foot wingspan and teeth?"

  Marty retaliated with a scowl and said, "Ron did say he didn't get a good look at it because it was so dark. The shadows and such probably gave it the appearance of being bigger. It's possible an eagle or owl could have attacked at night if it was starving or sick. And as for teeth, if something were clawing at you in the dead of night it would seem to be monstrous rather than mundane." As if in afterthought, Marty added, "My theory is more plausible than your chupacabra explanation."

  Ron’s anger began to show. "Let me tell you something smartass. I know what I saw, and I believe my wife. It was very large and had teeth. Besides, no eagle can pick up a full grown German Shepherd and fly off with it."

  "Er, German Shepherd?" Marty raised a quizzical eyebrow. "No one said anything about a German Shepherd. I assumed you were talking about a toy poodle or Chihuahua or another small canid."

  "You know what they say about those who assume," Ron replied, and glared in challenge.

  The doctor was truly getting exasperated with Marty’s constant bickering. He growled, "Okay, enough. We don't need any . . ."

  Marty grinned and interrupted the doctor. He turned to Ron and mocked, "Makes an ass out of you and me, ass-u-me, I heard that one in the third grade. Can't you come up with anything more creative than that? Is it that your tiny brain is still on the third grade level?"

  Doctor Burch sighed and shook his head. Marty always loved getting into word battles in order to make an ass out of someone. He also had the annoying habit of needing to get in the last word.

  To his surprise, Ron kept his mouth shut and turned away.r />
  The doctor turned to Marty to chastise the young man, but thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. He watched as Marty smiled at his apparent victory and began picking up his scattered gear.

  Doctor Burch turned to face the group, “Everyone, meet back a half hour before dark so we can get set up.”

  Bo added, “Make that an hour before dark. We need to be settled in under the protective canopy well before dark.”

  The doctor looked up at the dawn sky. The first rays of sunlight were glinting overhead, and he could see the outline of razor wire, which Bo had strung up some thirty feet over their heads in a protective and deadly weave. Like an iron spider web, the wire crisscrossed amongst the six large trees, and sheltered them from any flying hazards.

  He thought the wire was a bit much but didn't argue, since Bo had insisted, and even seemed comforted by it. Bo had even gone through the trouble of stringing up a few strands around the outside edges. He had claimed it would keep anything from flying in through the sides.

  Marty shook his head and eyed the razor wire, “Why the hell am I even out here with you nut cases?” He shouldered his pack and strode toward his truck, and promptly stepped into a pile of cow manure. He shook his head again and kept walking.

  Doctor Burch laughed and headed towards his own vehicle.

  Chapter 2

  Marty arrived back at the research site right at dark. He was late but he didn’t care as he figured they were all on a wild goose chase anyway. He knew that they weren’t going to find anything and if it weren’t for the fat paychecks, he would have never agreed to this foolish endeavor.

  As he neared the research site, Bo seemingly materialized from nowhere and urgently signaled for him to hurry. Marty decided to annoy Bo a little and slowed his pace, taking slow small baby steps.