Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 35



GOMEZ KEPT HIS AR-15 on his shoulder. He was on night patrol. Alone. The Hammer sent him out to keep watch so the others could get some sleep. Tomorrow night would be his turn to sleep, if he could.

He doubted it. This place was too screwed up. The Hammer wouldn’t admit it, but Gomez sensed that even he was on edge.

A heavy, musty odor drifted toward him, damp earth mixed with something decaying. Perhaps, he thought nervously, perhaps the smell of death.

The scent grew stronger. Everything in him wanted to run back to the others, wake them, and tell them something was wrong. Instead, he took a deep breath. He needed to check the perimeter, control the situation, neutralize the danger. Only after that, if he found more work to be done, would he disturb the others.

The last thing he needed or wanted was anyone mocking him for being scared.

A dark blur passed him.

It startled him. I’m just seeing things. In starlight, of course the surroundings looked dark and mysterious. Probably just some large branches of a tree blowing in the wind.

Except that no wind blew.

He spooked himself. Nothing was out there.

Again, a dark blur whistled by, eye level. His blood ran cold. The thick, heavy stink ventured so close he taste it with every breath.

He gripped his rifle tighter and shifted it on his shoulder so he could quickly aim and shoot the way he’d been trained to do. Maybe he had been wrong not to warn the others. Slowly he backed toward his comrades. Something neared him, closing in. He couldn’t hear it; he couldn’t see it. But he knew it lurked there.

The world seemed to slow down, so slow he could almost see it spinning on its axis. A sharp pain touched his neck, then something red and warm splashed in front of his face, every individual droplet visible. He lifted his hand to his neck, touched the torn, jagged skin. Blood. Too much blood.

Long, sharp claws ripped through his clothes, through his skin from chest to groin, piercing and slicing. As he watched his stomach torn from his body and lifted into the air, he opened his mouth, but no sound came. He fell to the ground, silently praying for the mercy of death.

o0o

No one said a word.

When their companion hadn’t woken them at the end of his night patrol duty, they went in search.

Now, the Hammer and his men looked down at the body and wondered what could have done that to a man. After they buried Gomez, they walked away from the grave.

“This is wrong, man,“ Nose spat out the words. “This is so wrong.”

“F*ck,” Fish muttered, which meant he agreed.

“It had to have been a grizzly,” Hammill said. “Nothing unusual. Nothing supernatural. We increase our patrol. No one goes it alone. We watch each other’s back.”

A twig snapped.

They pulled their guns and aimed them in the direction of the noise. They aimed at each other.

Hammill took out his nyala hunting knife, strong, sharp, and brutal. Whatever was out there, whatever did that to Gomez, wasn’t going to get away.

They hunted it, following its blood trail deep into the forest, and eventually, they smelled it and knew they were near.

Hammill saw it first, and his courage nearly gave out at the sight. The creature looked more apelike than anything he had ever seen in the Americas. The possibility of this being the infamous Sasquatch flashed through his mind before he dismissed it. For one thing, it was no bigger than a man. It had to be some kind of bear.

He motioned to his men to stand still, to stop talking.

It turned at that moment. With a roar, its mouth opened baring fangs. He tightened his grip on the knife. It leaped, and he felt the fangs dig into the arm he raised to protect himself.

He stabbed at the monster’s gut, twisted and ripped upward. He didn’t want to think he heard his own voice screaming, joined by his men as they unleashed the fear and anger held inside since entering this strange land.

Blood squirted onto his face, his hair, his hands, and he didn’t know if it was his own or that of the creature as his men joined in the frenzied attack. They also used knives. They stabbed it over and over. They wanted it to suffer. They wanted to kill it in the same way that it had slaughtered Gomez. Still, it fought hard.

Then the creature slumped down, its life gone.

None of the men looked back at it. They didn’t know, and didn’t care to know, what it was. They dragged their leader away to flush the bites with antiseptics, sew him up, and try to ignore the panic-stricken dread that consumed them all.