Authors: Mark Wheaton
To the man-beast’s surprise, Bones was back on his feet in an instant, his teeth gnashing the air. But fast or not, Tadodaho was ready for this and swung the pitchfork handle around, knocking the shepherd in the side of the head, which sent him rolling to the ground directly in front of the sasquatch. It was then nothing to drop the net over the dog, the heavy weights, about thirty pounds each, keeping the edges in place. This time when Bones tried to right himself, the low net kept him from getting to his full height. As hard as he fought against the ropes, he could neither bite through them or lift them from his body.
Tadodaho raised the pitchfork.
“I look forward to meeting you again, Tawiskaron,” the sasquatch said, relieved.
But before he could deliver the death blow, Tadodaho was struck from behind by a fiery club. It wasn’t the strongest attack he’d ever endured, but as he wasn’t prepared, the force was enough to send him to one knee, dazed. As he tried to stand back up, however, he was struck again, this time feeling the heat of the weapon with greater intensity.
“Fuck you, Bigfoot!” cried Patrick, raising the club again.
He brought the club down again, this time on the sasquatch’s back, but could tell the blow did no damage. But it didn’t matter much, as Tadodaho’s fur had already caught fire, the blaze spreading quickly around his head and neck.
“Why did you…?” the sasquatch roared, raising itself up and turning to face Patrick.
“’Cause maybe you’re not the dominant species you thought you were,” the young lawyer announced, slamming the club directly into Tadodaho’s face. This had the desired effect, crumpling the bones in the sasquatch’s face as his mouth and nose exploded with blood. The monster had just realized he was on fire when the blow happened, but now it was too late.
Patrick lifted the net off Bones and picked up Tadodaho’s pitchfork with his one good hand. As the sasquatch moaned in pain, smoke pouring off his body like a pyre, a shriek of horror filled the tunnel.
“No!” screamed Jess, seeing her lover in flames.
Patrick eyed her a moment, then shook his head.
“It’s for your own good, Jess,” he remarked.
He raised the pitchfork and slammed it directly into the sasquatch’s throat. A geyser of blood erupted from the double wounds, and Tadodaho choked out his last breath.
“Come on, boy,” Patrick said to the German shepherd.
Patrick ran for hours. He didn’t know where he pulled the energy from, but he knew death followed, so he had no choice. As the forest was pitch black, he tripped over countless roots, rocks, and bushes, tearing his arms and legs. After seeing the sasquatch tribe panic in the arena, he’d decided he’d hitched his future to the wrong wagon and had to get out. He’d considered getting his belongings from his living quarters but didn’t think he had time. The key to escape was the dog, and the dog wasn’t going to wait.
So now he paid the price.
“Goddammit!” he cried, receiving three bloody scratches from a leafless branch as he tripped, the kind of thing even a windbreaker would’ve prevented.
He cursed again when he scraped his shins on a half-buried boulder. Again, a pair of jeans, and he would’ve been fine.
But he couldn’t dwell. He had to get back to civilization, tell the authorities what he’d seen, then bring the army back here and blow the whole place to pieces. As he ran, he memorized his story, knowing he had to keep mention of sasquatches and old women who could see the future to a minimum. He knew enough of the newcomers’ names to raise an alarm. And if those in Forestry Service who had clearly aided and abetted the lost tribe stepped in and accused him of being some kind of mass murderer, he’d show them where they buried the girl Jess had come with. No one would believe a hundred-pound weakling like him could break a girl’s neck with a flick of the wrist.
And then he’d set about trying to stop this “apocalyptic event” Orenda kept talking about.
He’d tried to keep track of the German shepherd, but it wasn’t easy. He’d stop, hear rustling nearby, fear it was the sasquatches, and keep going, only to see that it was the dog a few minutes later. He wasn’t sure why the animal was following him, but maybe the thing felt some sense of loyalty to Patrick since he’d freed him from the net.
At first light, Patrick finally slowed down. He jogged instead of ran, but he knew he was dehydrated. He hadn’t found any water at night, though he’d expected to come across some kind of creek or river at
some
point, but there’d been none.
But amidst the birdsong and the rustle of the tree canopy in the breeze, he now heard a new sound: running water. The only problem was the density of the thicket. He couldn’t see more than few yards to the left or right due to all the trees, so he had no idea which way to turn to get to the creek or even if it was directly in front of him.
As he stood there considering this, he suddenly heard a great crash behind him. He whirled around just in time to see the merrymaking German shepherd bound past him in a diagonal direction, snapping twigs and kicking up leaves as he ran.
“Wait up!” Patrick called uselessly.
He hurried after the dog, slicing his arms and legs and even his right ear now on the nearby branches, but he knew the shepherd was leading him to water.
Sure enough, he found Bones lying at the bank of a small brook a few minutes later. Only about three feet across and maybe eight inches deep, the creek’s current was so gentle it could be stopped by a matchbook. But it was water, and plenty of it. Patrick fell to his knees and drank.
“Thanks, boy,” Patrick said, petting the shepherd. “Good find!”
After downing his first dozen gulps, Patrick realized he had to pee. He stepped over the river and pissed against a tree on the other side. When he came back, Bones was asleep.
“Good idea,” he said, but without any intention of joining the dog.
He took another drink, then washed his feet and the various cuts on his arms and legs. The frigid water stung like hell, and he had no clue what kind of microbes existed in it, but it got the dirt out and stopped any wounds that were still bleeding. He drank a little more, had to pee again, but this time came back to no dog.
“Ugh,” Patrick sighed. “Where’d you go, boy?!”
He waited for an answer, but figured the shepherd had either gone off to pee as well or was distracted by a passing rabbit, possum, or skunk. He sat down on the bank to rest for a moment longer before heading on. When he heard the familiar rustle of branches and leaves behind him this time, he barely glanced back.
“Enough play time, dog. Let’s keep moving.”
But when the rustling stopped and no dog materialized, Patrick turned around.
“Come on, boy! Let’s go!”
That’s when he saw Jess a few yards away, just within the trees.
“Jess?!” Patrick said, surprised. “You realized I was right, huh?”
She answered by raising a crude bow and stringing an arrow. She loosed it at Patrick and it whistled past his face, missing by a foot.
“Jesus Christ!” Patrick bellowed, clambering to his feet. “You could’ve hit me.”
Without a word, Jess moved a few steps closer and strung a second arrow. Patrick, incensed, stomped toward her to grab the bow away.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” he roared.
He was only three feet away when Jess let the second arrow fly. It hardly had time to get up to speed, but it pierced Patrick’s side regardless. The impact was the same as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a horse. He doubled over, then saw that the arrow was buried several inches into his flesh. As he tried to move, he could feel the sharp tip grind through his muscles and organs.
“
FUCK
!” he cried, sinking to the ground. “Jess?!”
But the young woman had already pulled a third arrow from the quiver hanging at her side. She strung it and fired. This bolt struck Patrick in his thigh, but awkwardly, entering near the top, skating over the bone, then exiting the other side before drilling its tip into Patrick’s elbow, which was leaning on his other leg as he was bent over.
“
GNNNHH
!” Patrick gurgled, feeling like he had to vomit.
When he saw Jess stringing yet another arrow, he launched himself backward. The arrow flew harmlessly past him. As she strung another, Patrick limped to the brook and stumbled down the bank, trying to get away.
But as the trees only made aiming difficult, Jess discovered that Patrick had made things even easier for her. He moved in a straight line away, but so slowly that he was still an easy, albeit gradually shrinking, target. She raised her bow, strung an arrow, and loosed. Though she’d aimed at his back, it entered his neck at the base of his skull. He whirled like a cartoon character swatting a bee, then fell face first into the water.
Jess grabbed another arrow and ran over to find him twitching, his muscles seeming to spasm as his body was hastened on toward death.
“Jess…?” he whispered, as if hoping for absolution.
Instead, she roughly pulled the bloody arrows from his body and placed them back in the quiver.
“Sorry. It’s apparently hard to make arrows, and we need as many as possible.”
Patrick stared at her in horror as she yanked the one out from his leg, taking almost half a pound of flesh with it. She then kicked him over, his head landing face first in the stream, placed a foot on the back of his head, and tore the one out from his neck. As his life’s blood gushed out and into the creek, she kept her foot on his skull. Red foam erupted up to the surface as Patrick weakly fought back, but it was over soon.
Leaving the bloody drowned mess in the water, Jess stepped back onto the bank and began the long walk back to the mountain. She knew there would be a time to mourn, but now she had to prepare. She touched her stomach, a little unsure, and inwardly said a prayer of thanks to Orenda and asked for the old woman to continue to bless and guide her from the other side.
A few moments later, as her face filled with the sun’s warmth when she entered a tiny clearing in the dense woods, she knew her prayer had been answered.
It took Bones half the morning to find the rabbit that had pulled him away from Patrick. He’d actually picked up its scent, then discovered its warren first, staying close by until the rabbit returned. When it did, it detected the shepherd and bolted for its hole. But Bones was driven by hunger now and easily overtook the small animal.
After devouring the rabbit, Bones returned to the creek and found Patrick’s corpse, the young man’s hair bobbing up and down the only remaining movement. He sniffed around it a moment longer, then discovered the scent of Jess as well. He tracked it for a few dozen yards, then grew tired and took a nap, settling under a nearby tree.
When he awoke hours later, Jess’s scent had grown fainter still, replaced by the smell of the herd of deer Bones had taken the yearling from the day before. Getting to his feet, still a little weak from his injury, the shepherd tracked the scent to the southwest. It would take hours to catch up, but Bones was hungry again.
J
ess’s baby, a boy, was born ten months later. She named him Tadodaho in hopes that when he heard stories of his father, he would see those qualities in himself. Like a handful of the other babies born around that time, he shared characteristics of both his human mother and his sasquatch father. A couple of the women had had to have primitive Caesarians, as their babies had grown so large in utero that a vaginal birth would’ve likely killed the mother, but Jess had Little Tadodaho naturally and was back on her feet within days.
The baby thrived and was soon one of the largest newborns in the encampment. When word of the plague finally came, Jess had an optimistic thought that maybe they’d survive, so cut off from the rest of the world were they. But after the first few newcomer deaths, she knew she was soon to die as well and prayed that her child would be spared.
A week later, two days after the disease had struck her with such intensity that one moment she was cooking an evening meal and the next she was in bed wrapped in skins, quaking with fever, she was taking in what she knew would be her last sunset.
Tadodaho was finally brought to her, and she delighted in his healthy appearance. He’d most certainly been around her when she’d been infected, but he showed no signs of illness. She wept bitterly, wishing with every fiber of her being that she could see him grow up, become strong, become the image of his father, but knew this wasn’t meant to be.
She finally smiled at her baby and, with her last breath, told him the world was his. It would be almost two hundred years before the grandson of this small child encountered at last the animal that had been so pivotal in bringing his parents together before being just as instrumental in tearing them apart.
Called a "quite gifted storyteller" by
Fangoria
magazine and "an exciting new voice in the speculative, dark fantasy genre" by author Michael (
Enter, Night
) Rowe, Mark Wheaton is the author of the bestselling and critically-acclaimed indie horror novels
Sunday Billy Sunday: A Memoir
and
Flood Plains
as well as the popular
Bones
series. He is also a horror screenwriter (
Friday the 13th, The Messengers, Infected
), graphic novelist (Dark Horse's
The Cleaners
) and children's playwright (
Evita Sassy and the Black Mask's Last Gasp
). His first YA novel,
Finders & Keepers: The Sword of the Realm
is set for release in '13 from ZOVA Books.