Devil Hunters

by R. Gualtieri

  “The one who tracked you guys down?”

  “Yeah. Turns out she’s Guiterrez’s sister-in-law. Guess who I think is going to get an anonymous tip when this is all over?”

  Mitchell smiled. “It won’t be about environmental damage, so I think we’re free and clear there.” He turned his head. “What do you think of all this shit, Dan...?” Before she could reply, he reached into his pocket. “Hold on, getting a call.” He pulled out his cell phone and answered it. After a moment, he said to the others, “It’s Arthur, back at the lab.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Hold on, I’m trying to find out.” Mitchell returned his attention to the phone. “What’s that? I couldn’t hear you. Say it...” He pulled the phone away and looked down at the screen. “Damnit.”

  A few moments later, it began to vibrate again. Mitchell once more answered. “Hey, can you hear me? I’ll call you back. I said, I’ll call you back. I’m getting no...” Finally, he pocketed the device. “I lost him. No bars.”

  Derek looked around at the trees with mock concern on his face. “Mind blower, isn’t it?”

  “Very funny.”

  “So what’s going on?” Danni asked, rising from some broken branches she’d been inspecting.

  Derek was proud at how seriously she took her job, even if whatever she’d been examining probably wasn’t a lead worth pursuing.

  “Results are in at the lab, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying,” Mitchell replied, before turning to Derek. “How long do you think we’re going to be out here playing hide and go seek?”

  Derek looked at his watch. “Too early to call it a night, at least without having Yarlberg crawl up our asses about it.”

  “Okay. Why don’t I head back to camp and take one of the ATVs to Shilough? I should be able to get a signal there, see if our sample was anything other than a blob of bear puke.”

  Derek considered this. He didn’t like splitting up the group during a hunt, but so far this night had been a bust. They hadn’t seen anything more threatening than a chipmunk. “We could radio Eric, have him call Arthur.”

  “Do you really want those goose-steppers to be the first ones to get their hands on anything? Especially if it’s something important?”

  “Good point.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Mitchell added, “I’ll be fine.”

  After a moment, Derek replied, “Okay. Just keep your radio on and your eyes peeled.”

  “Trust me. I don’t want to have to hear about it from Frank for the rest of my life.” Mitchell checked their position, got his bearings, then unshouldered his rifle and walked off.

  “Radio in when you get there and let us know what you learn,” Derek called after him.

  “Got it!” Mitchell replied back, before disappearing from sight.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Derek’s radio beeped about an hour later. It was Mitchell, letting them know he’d made it out of the woods and back to Shilough.

  “Any issues?”

  “None on the trip itself. Although the company out here could be a bit better.”

  “You know, I can hear you, right?” Eric’s voice cut in over the radio.

  Derek let out a laugh, then said, “Let us know what you find out. Over.”

  “Can’t say I envy him,” Francis said. “I think I’d sooner be out here with the boogeyman.”

  “I know what you mean. Let’s catch up to Danni.”

  They didn’t have to go far. She was maybe twenty yards ahead, busy studying something on the ground.

  “Find anything?”

  “Huh?” she asked, hunched over.

  Derek walked closer. “What have you got there?”

  “I think these are footprints, but it’s kind of weird.”

  “From what?”

  “That’s the problem. I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it’s pretty messed up.” She pointed to a large print in the mud that was more defined than the others. “See this? That looks like a fairly well-defined toe. But then here, that’s a claw mark. And this bump here, maybe an old break.”

  “Or a deformity,” Derek said.

  “Maybe. Whatever it is, it’s big and heavy. Look how far down that print goes. I’d say two-fifty, probably closer to three-hundred.”

  Francis joined them in peering down at the strange tracks. “It’s on the low end, but still within squatch range. Juvenile, maybe? Could’ve had something wrong with it and was driven out of the clan.”

  “Not usually their style,” Derek said.

  Danni pointed to other parts of the print. “I don’t think so. Look at this indentation in the back. Could be a dew claw. Never seen a bigfoot with one of those, deformity or not.”

  Derek leaned over and studied it as well. She was right. It did look like a dew claw, but more reptilian than anything. The rear of the foot was similar to the prints of a megalania, a giant monitor lizard thought to be extinct. They’d tracked one in New Zealand about three years back, but this print was far smaller. Definitely not a twenty foot dinosaur throwback. It was as if this print was cobbled together from different unrelated species ... which probably meant it was. “A fake?”

  Danni stood up and wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Could be. I mean, the way the ground is depressed looks like this came from a real foot, but then there’s the shape. If it is a fake, then whoever carved this was either really good at what they do or really lousy.”

  “Oh, man!”

  Derek and Danni turned toward Francis, but the big man didn’t appear to be in any danger.

  “Sorry, guys. Leaned against a tree and put my hand in something nasty.”

  “It’s a bog,” Danni replied. “Pretty much everything here is nasty.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Derek started to laugh, but was interrupted by the sound of his radio beeping.

  He motioned the others over and raised the volume so they could listen. “Derek here. Tell me you got something, Mitch. Over.”

  “Something is an apt description.”

  “Come again?”

  “I called Arthur. The results were in. I had him read them to me over the phone. Then I had him read them again.”

  “I take it they were interesting.”

  “That’s just it,” Mitchell replied over the radio. “I’m not really sure what to make of it. I asked him to rerun the sequence to make sure it’s not a glitch.”

  “What did they come back with?”

  “Human,” Mitchell replied.

  The three hunters shared a glance, as if they’d suspected all along.

  “Kinda, anyway.”

  “Wait, hold on,” Derek said. “Define ‘kinda.’”

  “That’s exactly it. Normally I’d expect high eighties or nineties, even with a contaminated sample. This came back as a sixty-three percent match with Homo sapiens.”

  “That’s not very high at all.”

  “No, it’s not. Problem is, the rest of the results are all over the map, and that’s not even including the non-organic material in the sample.”

  “Non-organic?” Francis asked. “So what you’re saying is the samples were fucked.”

  “Maybe.” Derek could hear the frustration in Mitchell’s voice. “I don’t know. From what Arthur read to me, it sounds more degraded than contaminated, which doesn’t make sense either. When you guys are finished chasing ghosts out there, I need to get back to the lab and read it myself.”

  “Not so sure about ghosts. Danni found some prints.”

  “From what?”

  “Hate to throw this one back at you, Mitch, but we’re not sure. They’re either faked or whatever made them is some god-awful mess that I don’t even want to imagine.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Start wrapping up on your end. We’ll head back, regroup, and double check those results. If it looks even remotely possible that we’re de
aling with human DNA, then I think we hand this off to the cops where it belongs.”

  “Roger that.”

  “We’ll see you in a while. Over.”

  “So we’re calling this turd hunt?” Francis asked.

  “Yeah. I’m not seeing much reason to do otherwise. It’s a shit show out here. Let’s head in before we end up covered in leeches or something.”

  “What about those prints?” Danni asked. “There’s one other thing we haven’t considered about them.”

  “What?”

  “If they are fake, then why bother making them all the way out here where nobody is likely to see them?”

  Derek had to admit that was a good question, but he didn’t have a good answer to go along with it ... at least not yet. Still, she was right. In their line of work, one didn’t so easily dismiss potential evidence, even if later it turned out to be faker than a three-dollar bill. “Take casts of the best. We’ll take a look at them in the lab. Maybe in better light something will stand out.”

  Danni nodded. “On it.”

  She turned back toward the prints, while Francis took off his pack and began rooting inside of it. He knew the big man would be fishing out his handheld camera so as to get some footage on the way in. That way the journey wouldn’t be a complete loss.

  He was about to turn away to ask Danni if she needed any help when he heard Francis zip up his pack, loud in the quiet woods.

  Too loud.

  It took Derek a moment, but then he realized the forest had gone completely silent around them.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Frank?”

  “I hear it,” Francis replied. “Or more like don’t hear it.”

  Derek glanced over his shoulder and found Danni had likewise abandoned the plaster kit in favor of her gun.

  The silence of the woods was telling. Something was near, and it wasn’t them.

  Derek held up a fist, signaling his group to be alert but not move. His instincts were telling him that something had snuck up on them – not a situation his group usually found themselves in.

  Then again, they usually took their hunts more seriously than this one. Just now, they’d forgone communication via earpiece to blare out Mitchell’s report, giving their position away to everything within hundreds of yards.

  Derek scanned the surrounding woods with both his eyes and ears, although focusing more on the latter. This late, in woods this dense, seeing wasn’t necessarily believing.

  There was nothing but the quiet around them at first, but then Derek caught a noise, halfway between a cough and a wheeze, off to their left. A moment later, he heard a branch break.

  “What the hell?”

  “Get the thermal, Frank,” Derek whispered back at him. He turned and found Danni rooted to her spot, sweeping the surrounding bushes with her rifle. He caught her attention and motioned her over.

  “Nice and quiet,” he said, in as low a tone as he thought he could use and still be heard. “Let’s not scare it off.”

  Francis gave him a raised eyebrow in return, but he ignored it.

  He wasn’t sure what was out there, but it didn’t sound particularly dangerous. More like an asthmatic kid stumbling around in the dark, which was ridiculous, but a far cry from the growl or snarl he’d been expecting.

  He almost laughed out loud at that. The truth was, they had no idea what to expect. It wasn’t like the government archives contained much more than scattered reports on this creature, most of which contradicted themselves.

  There came the sound of another branch breaking. Whatever was out there was moving ... none too stealthily, by the sound of things. That was odd in itself. Ambush predators that couldn’t sneak up on their prey wouldn’t last long. However, an injured predator, mad with hunger, would have gone for broke by now.

  Foliage snapped again, followed by another wheezing chuff.

  Derek’s eyes narrowed as he tried to determine what path their stalker was taking. It seemed to be circling them, but purposely staying just out of sight.

  He turned and whistled briefly, catching Danni’s attention. He inclined his head, indicating she should close ranks with him and Francis. When she moved to join them, it was far quieter than whatever ... or whoever was out there.

  That thought stuck with Derek. Was this some joke by Zeist and his buddies? Maybe some more of Yarlberg’s minions were out here playing with them for some reason. He hoped that wasn’t the case. You didn’t joke around with people who were armed and more than ready to use their weapons.

  “Are we being played?” Francis whispered, no doubt thinking the same thing.

  Derek shrugged, then did something he’d only had to do a few times before during a hunt. He’d learned long ago that if something sounded fake, it probably was fake. He raised his voice and called out, “If there’s anyone out there, identify yourselves now.”

  The others relaxed their stances ever so slightly. If someone did show themselves, they didn’t want to accidentally shoot them. If they fled instead, it would be a waste of ammo to fire after it without a proper visual. In that case, they’d check for tracks and determine if it made sense to pursue.

  The silence stretched out for a few more seconds, then there came a small sound from somewhere behind Derek – something striking a tree trunk, then tumbling to the ground.

  “Did someone just throw a couple of pebbles to distract us, like they do in the movies?” Danni asked, her voice low but incredulous.

  Derek lowered his gun and sighed. He wasn’t sure if it was teenagers or Zeist having some fun with them but, whoever it was, they were going to get his foot up their...

  Something charged out of the bushes to Derek’s right. He had just enough time to sense its movement when he was bowled over by something big and heavy.

  He rolled with the blow and came up to one knee. In the space of a second he saw that his two allies had been taken down as well. Francis lay on the ground holding his head. As for Danni...

  He turned and saw her down in the grass looking up at something looming over her. She tried to raise her gun, but it was pulled from her hands.

  Derek raised his weapon and switched on the attached flashlight, illuminating the scene before him.

  He’d seen many a strange creature in his time. Most had been extant survivors, small pockets of an otherwise extinct species that had somehow thrived where others had not. He’d seen prehistoric hominids, birds, giant eels, serpentine whales, and more. What he saw in front of him, though, wasn’t like anything that should have ever existed.

  What the hell?!

  The creature was large, roughly seven feet, but grotesquely deformed. Several cyst-like growths protruded from its back, which probably kept it from ever fully standing upright. Amid these were boney protrusions which jutted out in strange non-symmetrical patterns. Its skin was brownish in color, if it could even be called skin. It was rough, almost scale-like in places.

  Whatever it was, it turned toward Derek, gave a chuffing hiss, then took off into the bushes. He’d gotten, at best, a second’s look at it, but it was enough for him to recognize its alien strangeness, its wrongness.

  Then he was back on his feet, cursing himself for not taking the shot. The truth, however, was that he’d been shaken – not only from being ambushed, but from what he’d seen. Besides, his teammate’s well-being was more important than pursuit at the moment.

  Danni was already pulling herself up, a bit stunned but otherwise unharmed. She joined Derek at Francis’s side, but fortunately he, too, was already rising.

  “You okay?” Derek asked them, even as he heard the creature retreating through the woods.

  “Clonked my head good, but I’ll live,” Francis replied. There was a thin stream of blood dripping down the side of his face, but that seemed to be the extent of his injuries.

  “Danni?”

  “Bruised and scratched up a bit.” She held out her hands. In the glare fro
m his flashlight, Derek could see long, thin scratches on her arms where the creature had grabbed her. “Where’s my rifle?”

  Francis switched on his light as well and they took a brief look around.

  Derek wasn’t surprised to not find the weapon. He hadn’t seen the creature drop it before it ran off. “I think whatever that was took it.”

  “What the fuck was that thing?” Francis asked. “I only got a brief glimpse before it tackled me.”

  Danni had already retrieved her sidearm, a Glock 22, and was busy keeping an eye in the direction the thing had disappeared in. “No clue. Derek?”

  “Same here,” he replied.

  “Did you get a good look at it?”

  “Just enough to know it was more like something out of the X-Files than nature.” He took a few moments to explain what he’d seen, allowing them all to recover from the shock of the attack. When he was done, Danni offered a few additional details she’d noticed from her angle.

  “Clawed hands and definitely a male,” she added, her eyes still wide. “A male what, though? Remember what you were saying earlier, about it being a disfigured squatch?”

  “Sure as hell snuck up on us like one,” Francis replied, scanning the surrounding brush as they talked.

  “Doubt it,” Derek said. “When it turned to look at me, there was no eyeshine. It didn’t remotely look or move like one either.”

  Danni nodded. “Yeah, I thought so. I caught a hint of scales. Devolved reptoid maybe?”

  “Again with the eyes,” Derek replied. “They were definitely mammalian.”

  “So what does that leave us with?” Francis asked, to which Derek smiled in response. “No. Don’t say it.”

  “Yep,” he replied. “I’m afraid so. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that was the Jersey Devil.”

  As to what the devil actually was, Derek didn’t care to speculate further.

  At least not until they tracked it down again.

  CHAPTER 18

  The creature left a trail that was easy to follow. Danni didn’t need to even check for prints. It ran straight and true, not bothering to mask its passage. They took it slow, however, to ensure it didn’t get a chance to double back and sneak up on them again.