“Slow down, boss!”
As much as he wanted to ignore the advice and keep barreling ahead, Eric knew it would be foolish to become separated.
The ATVs allowed two riders – one in the front to drive, and one in the back to sweep the woods with the high-powered LED lamps they’d liberated from the storage boxes of each.
I should remember to thank Jenner for those after we arrest his ass.
That left two of his men on foot, greatly negating the advantage the ATVs gave them in the first place. Eric had been tempted to leave them behind with the cars, but that would have screwed up his plans for convincing their quarry to surrender via way of their superior numbers.
As much as he despised the idea of walking in these godforsaken woods, the plan was to ditch the ATVs once they found the camp site – after making sure they couldn’t be reclaimed by their targets in case they doubled back.
Damned things have to have a distributor cap or something.
Nice as they were to ride on, he didn’t want Jenner’s team to hear them coming. There was also the swampy terrain to take into account. The ground had been getting increasingly muddier the further in they went. With his luck, they’d end up sinking in a bog.
He’d been hoping to end this quickly – catch them and make sure their asses got on a plane headed anywhere but here. But now it looked like this was going to be a long slog. Though Eric preferred to end this in a peaceful manner, the longer he was forced to be out in the woods, the less inclined he was to care whether Jenner and his medic were tossed onto a plane with a few extra bruises to make up for the trouble they caused.
They had just entered a small clearing when Sullivan called from the other ATV, “What’s that?”
At first, Eric thought it was just a large pile of leaves and was tempted to dismiss it, but then he took a second look and realized it was actually camouflaged fabric – the side of a tent. They’d found the base camp.
Thank goodness for small favors.
Eric ordered his men to disembark. They secured the ATVs – fortunately, Hopper seemed to have some insight into that – then checked the camp site to make sure there was no sign of recent habitation. Everything was in good order, having been set up only the day prior, but there wasn’t any sign of a freshly lit fire or that anyone had visited since then.
“Some decent stuff here,” Bob said after checking things out.
“Trash it.”
“What? But I just said...”
“I know what you said,” Eric snapped. “I’m not about to let them circle behind us, grab what they can, and then make a run for it. Take anything useful you find. Scatter the rest.”
“What about this?” Muellenberg asked, stepping from the storage tent holding something heavy.
Eric shined his light and saw it was a professional-grade camera. He didn’t consider himself a petty man, but the bastards had already seen to it that he’d be robbed of a night’s sleep in a warm bed. He decided to indulge in a whim. “Let me see that.”
Muellenberg handed the camera over and Eric threw it into the side of a tree with a satisfying crunch of plastic and metal.
He turned back to his men. “Like I said, trash it all.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Was that a tree knock?” Mitchell asked as a distant sound carried to them.
Derek stopped and listened. Usually knocks came in multiple strikes. After several seconds, he shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
“A tree knock?” Julia asked.
Arthur stepped forward, an uncertain look on his face. “You mean like Sasquatch is supposed to make?”
“Danni said you watched the show,” Derek remarked with a grin. “But no. I don’t think that was one. Didn’t have the right cadence or duration.”
Julia let out a nervous laugh. “Don’t jinx us. The last thing we need is for bigfoot to crash this party.”
Mitchell smirked at her. “Sorry, but you’re a little late for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s definitely one in the area,” Derek said, his tone nonchalant. “Maybe more.”
“One what?”
“A squatch.” He started walking again. They were closing in on the area where he and his team had been ambushed. Just a little bit further.
He glanced back and saw Julia and Arthur both staring at him.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Julia asked.
“Not at all. Mitch?”
“He’s right,” Mitchell replied. “There was a fresh set of prints about half an hour back. Big fella. Probably male. At least five hundred pounds. Think I heard him skulking about a few times. Pretty sure he’s been keeping tabs on us.”
“W-what?! We need to...”
“Relax,” Derek said to the younger man. “It’s not mating season and there haven’t been any reports of aggression from this area. He’s not going to bother us if we don’t bother him. Probably just curious as to why people are tromping around out here after dark.”
“Are you sure?” Julia asked.
“Positive. Just don’t accidentally shoot at any big shadows you see. The last thing we want to do is piss it off and give it a reason to choose sides.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Danni put her ear to the ground again. She thought she’d spotted lights in the distance, but also realized her mind, combined with the surrounding marsh, could be playing tricks on her.
Her heart leapt in her throat when she heard the faint thud of footsteps. Again, hard to tell how far off, but she was convinced they were louder this time, and that meant they were closer.
Though it was hard to tell in the oppressive darkness, the area she was in felt similar to where they’d been ambushed. She’d found several more snares and trip wires since encountering the first one, drawing a mental map of where they were in relation to her.
If she was right in her assumption, that meant her team’s base camp was less than an hour away. She longed to run to it, lock herself up in the supply tent, and pretend she was safe, but that was the plan of a scared child hiding from monsters under the bed. The truth was the camp, without her friends there waiting for her, offered neither shelter nor succor from the creatures chasing her down.
She needed to find a secure place that would give her enough cover to hide or – if discovered – stand and fight. It was time to act.
Danni had noticed a bog close by that would suit her needs. She leaned her weapons against a tree, regretting putting them down for even a few moments, but it had to be done. Tearing off a section of her shirt, she emptied the shells from her pockets, wrapped them up, and placed them at the foot of the tree where the weapons lay.
That finished, she turned toward the bog, the waters glimmering beneath the faint starlight shining down from above.
This is going to suck.
She stepped to the edge of the water, feeling her feet starting to stick in the thick mud. Then she lay down and rolled in the unpleasant muck – trying to coat every inch of herself. It was cold and vile to the extreme but in a pinch, nature provided the very best camouflage one could hope for ... so long as one didn’t succumb to hypothermia first.
She coated her skin, her clothes, her hair, every part that could potentially stand out from the darkness of the surrounding woods, until she was certain that only the whites of her eyes could potentially give her away.
Finally, her teeth chattering from the cold mud touching her everywhere, she clawed her way back to her feet and made to step away from the brackish water.
A bit of dirt fell into her eyes, obscuring her vision. As she tried to blink it away, her feet caught on something sticking out of the mud and she tripped over it, burying her face into even more of the muck.
She pushed herself up, silently cursing her clumsiness, and coughed the mud out of her mouth and nostrils.
All my training and I still trip over a log.
Except, it hadn’t felt like a log. There’d been some give to it, a fact testified by her lack of stubbed toes. She was about to dismiss it as nothing more than a mound of mud, but could still feel the protrusion beneath her legs and it definitely felt more solid than just a lump of dirt.
Taking a few moments she didn’t have, Danni began to feel around, expecting to find nothing more interesting than maybe a mound of rotting vegetation.
But then her hand closed upon something and she froze. Praying she was wrong, she felt further and confirmed it. Beneath the muck and grime lay what she was certain was the toe of a leather boot.
Momentarily forgetting the danger she was in, she began to dig with her fingers, using the feeble light from above as best she could. After several seconds, there was no denying she’d uncovered a pair of human legs at the edge of the water. The top half of the body was partially submerged in the bog.
Danni grabbed hold and pulled with everything she had. It was slow going, the mud as cold and slippery as ice, but she managed to drag the corpse from the water.
Please no, please no, please no!
She began to feel along the body with her hands, wiping away the muck as best she could, praying that she felt some deformity, anything that would tell her this wasn’t one of her friends.
Pants, a waterlogged shirt... There was something around its waist – a belt with a knife scabbard. The weapon was still in its sheath. She drew it and held it up, the blade glinting in the meager starlight. It looked like a World War 2 Ka-Bar ... the same kind that Francis wore, a gift from his grandfather who had fought in the Pacific Theater.
“Oh God, no!”
Though it was too dark to know for certain, she had to be sure. She reached up until she found the body’s face. Though muck-encrusted, the man’s heavy beard was easily identified by touch.
She’d found one of her missing friends.