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Everyone was up early, and our camp site was bustling with activity when I crawled from the tent. Chance was there a minute later handing me a cup of Earl Grey tea just the way I like it—lots of milk, in this case powdered, and lots of sugar.
"Thanks. What can I do to help?"
"Grab breakfast. We'll head out as soon as everyone's ready. I already ate, so I'll pack up the tent."
Each group of two hunters was heading out in a different direction. If anyone found any cryptid evidence, they'd call it in, and the group would converge on that location. We all had maps with our sections marked off. It was impossible to cover every part of the forest, but we had a plan we hoped would work.
Chance and I headed out of camp hand-in-hand. "Are you ready for this?" he asked.
"Probably not," I said, "but I'll do my best." I always felt like a cryptid newbie around these people who'd been hunting cryptids for years, but Chance always reminded me that I'd had more interactions with cryptids in the past few months than most of the others had in all their years of cryptid hunting.
I had learned enough to know that even if every cryptid on the list was in these woods, it would take a lot of luck to find any of them. Most of the cryptid evidence I'd seen in the woods had been related to bigfoot. Bigfoot was the one cryptid we weren't looking for this time. We knew there were bigfoot in the area. Some of them had escaped from the lab, but they had been integrated into the local population expressly to hide them from the terrorists who had been funding the illegal experimentation that went on at the lab.
After stopping to eat the rest of our fried chicken for lunch, we continued on through the woods. Chance held out his arm to stop me. We had just walked down to a wide area near a stream. The ground was muddy and covered with prints. Staying to the dryer ground, we walked along examining the prints. After making a second pass, Chance pulled me back into the trees and put his cheek to mine so he could speak into my ear. "Definitely bigfoot, but we can ignore those today. There's a group that could be chupacabra and some others that might be waheela."
"Do you want to call it in?"
"Let's follow the chupa prints for a while and see if we find any more evidence."
"Just be careful," I reminded him. Cassie told me that she was attacked by a pack of chupacabra during a BITES op. She didn't go into detail, but I heeded her warning about the creatures.
I couldn't tell how many animals there were in the group we were following, but there were lots of prints, and we were able to follow them for quite a distance. Chance stopped and pointed to some droppings mixed in with the chupa prints.
"Looks like the pack might be hunting deer."
Dusk was falling, when we heard the first barks. It could have been dogs or coyotes or chupacabra. I turned to Chance, and he must have read the question in my eyes. He reached for my hand and pulled me along through the trees as he followed the sound. I wasn't sure what he was doing. The plan had been to call the others if we spotted any evidence of cryptids. Chance seemed determined to pursue these animals without the others. We climbed a slight rise and saw three chupacabra surrounding a deer. They'd already taken down the doe and were growling at each other over the carcass.
Chance pulled his rifle up and gave me a look that said he wondered why I wasn't doing the same. I hoped he properly read the "What the fudge are y'all thinking?" question in my return glare.
He didn't. He handed me my rifle and motioned for me to shoot the animal on the right. He'd take the one on the left and either of us could try to take down the third.
Chance held up three fingers, lowering each until he folded down the last finger, and fired. I fired almost simultaneously. Both of us hit our targets, but the animals didn't fall. I hoped the tranquilizers would take effect eventually and turned my attention to the third animal which had turned and was growling at Chance. For some reason, the creature was ignoring me. I guess since Chance was so much bigger than me, he was perceived as the greater threat. I took aim and missed. The first two animals had fallen over, and Chance was reloading. I took my eyes off the chupa to reload the tranq gun. When I put the sight back to my eye, I couldn't see the third animal.
I turned to look at Chance just as the animal leapt at him. I pulled the trigger, but the chupa's momentum carried him into Chance. They landed with the animal on top. Before the tranquilizer kicked in, the animal took a swipe across Chance's chest.
When the tranq kicked in, the animal collapsed on top of Chance. "I'm OK," he said. "Can you help me?"
I helped Chance roll the chupacabra off to the side. I could see the blood seeping through his shirt. Chance radioed for a pickup of the three chupacabra. "You'll need to give them more tranquilizer to keep them out for transport."
I shrugged out of my pack and unzipped the pocket with the tranquilizers. I gave each of the animals a shot of tranquilizer to ensure they stayed down until they were transported back to the lab. "OK. They're all out. Let me take a look at your chest."
"Anytime, Babe."
I pulled the first aid kit out of my pack and pulled up Chance's shirt. There were four long claw marks across his chest. They were bleeding, but after I cleaned them up, none of them appeared deep enough to require stitches. I bandaged them and helped Chance into a clean shirt.
"Are you feeling OK?" I asked.
"I'm fine. You did good."
"Thanks. Now explain to me why we didn't call the others?"
"We didn't need them. If this is any indication, there are a lot of creatures in these woods that we need to find. If everyone comes running whenever we find evidence, we won't make much headway."
I understood his point but didn't like the fact that he made the decision to deviate from the plan without consulting me.