Marrow
Tony Barrymore took a long drag off of his cigarette, inhaled deeply and gently exhaled, letting the smoke escape from his slightly parted lips. He looked down at his work boots but really wasn't looking at anything in particular. Mentally he was still waking up, and to help he took a sip of the coffee that he held in the same hand as his cigarette. He always thought that the coffee made in the kitchen of the Triple L Lumber Company Camp 4 tasted like shit but seeing that they were almost an hour away from the nearest paved road, a Tim Horton's was most definitely out of the question.
He glanced down at his watch and let out a heavy sigh. It was a quarter past five and he knew it was time to get on the road if he was going to be at the logging site on time. He took one final drag off of the cigarette and dropped it to the gravel driveway, then stomped it out. He walked over to his Ford Ranger, opened the door and pulled himself inside. After placing his coffee in the only cup holder that wasn't full of coins, he turned the key and the engine came to life.
As he drove out of the driveway and onto the logging road, he looked in his rearview mirror at Camp 4. It was essentially five mobile home trailers that had been converted into sleeping quarters. Each trailer housed six men and had a small recreational area that consisted of a television, a closet full of old board games and decks of cards. Alcohol was not permitted on Triple L owned land and so outside of smoking, the majority of the workers just slept. Also, there was one doublewide trailer that had been converted into a cafeteria. The cook for Camp 4 was a decent man, but unfortunately, he severely lacked imagination in the kitchen. He had a routine and nothing messed with that man and his routine.
Despite the remote location of the camp they had great cell phone coverage. While shifting his eyes from the road to his phone and back, Tony dialed Gordon Norwood's number. It rang twice.
"Hello?" a voice yelled over a deafening heavy engine.
"Gordie! How's it going?" Tony asked.
"Not too bad. We had a little problem with a protester this morning but other than that it's been clear sailing."
Tony shook his head. "Why don't they just fuck off?"
"Beats me, young buck. The guy really wasn't protesting as much as he was pleading. They don't want us cutting up here for some reason. I don't get it though; it's nowhere near the land they have designated as sacred. I don't know. Maybe they're just exercising their right to protest."
"Just because you have a right to do something, it doesn't always mean you should." Tony said.
"Well, that's your opinion on it. I better go so I can get this beast back to the road in time to have it refueled for you."
"See you soon." Tony closed his phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. He took another sip of coffee and turned on the radio. The cell phone coverage may have been great but radio reception was still non-existent and all Tony found was static and white noise.
Tony had gone to work at the Triple L Lumber Mill in Westwood, Nova Scotia after he graduated high school and he had worked there close to ten years. When Triple L announced they were interviewing applicants for their Harvesting/Logging program, he jumped at the chance. After successfully completing the program, he had worked as a harvester for six years. He wasn't married and didn't have any immediate family in Nova Scotia so living and working out of Camp 4 didn't bother him in the least. In fact, Tony found sitting inside of his harvester and cutting trees to be quite relaxing.
Only numbers painted on small white reflective signs at each turn identified the logging roads. Tony approached logging road 17 and turned onto it, immediately noticing a difference in the conditions in the road. The main logging road had regular maintenance while the other logging roads only had occasional repairs. The Ranger bounced in the deep ruts made by the logging truck and the bottom of his truck scraped the ground a few times. Tony grabbed his CB radio announcing that he was coming down the road. There were no logging trucks on their way out and Tony got the all clear.
It wasn't long before Gordon's Chevy Silverado came into view at the top of a rise parked just off of the road. It was one of the older models but Gordon kept it in really good working condition. As Tony reached the top of the rise, the road began to slope down at a gentle angle and he could see Gordon climbing out of the cab of the harvester. He parked his truck beside the Silverado and got out, stretching.
The road ended in a large circular area giving trucks and machines the room to turn around. Once the harvesting was finished, it would serve as the loading deck for the log trucks. The harvester was sitting at the very tip of the turnaround beside the service trailer that held all of the necessary replacement parts for the harvester as well as spill kits and fuel.
Tony slipped on his hardhat and safety vest and made his way toward Gordon, who was wearing his hardhat but no safety vest as required by all Triple L harvester operators.
"Hey, aren't you forgetting something old man?" Tony called out.
Gordon looked up at him and then down at his front. "Shit!" He scurried back up into the harvester's cab and came down with his vest. "I hate these fucking things."
"Gotta wear ’em." Tony said. “Did you reach your quota?"
"No, I was short by about thirty sticks."
"Don't worry old man. I'll make up for it." Tony grinned. "How's the beast doing?"
"She ran fine all shift. No problems." Gordon said.
Tony pulled out his cigarettes and offered one to Gordon who gladly accepted. Tony lit his and passed the lighter to Gordon. Looking at the harvester, Tony thought how much it looked like a bright yellow pre-historic beast with the black hydraulic hoses serving as snakes.
"Worst thing they ever did was take away our right to smoke out in the cut." Gordon said.
"I can see their point. Smoking out there is a fire risk." Tony said.
"Oh bullshit. No more a fire risk than these machines being out there." Gordon took a drag. "If anything, it's increasing their production costs because now I have to drive all the way out to the logging road to have a cigarette."
"So that's why your numbers are down. Too many smoke breaks. Ever try the gum or the patch?"
"You can shove that gum up your ass."
Tony didn't really know Gordon's age but if he had to guess he would say he was in his mid-fifties. He had a slight hunch but otherwise was in good physical condition. He still had a full set of teeth but they were a deep yellow and he always seemed to be wearing the same pair of jeans held up by black suspenders with a red and blue plaid shirt tucked into them.
"Alright old man, it's time for young buck to take over. You go home and get a good night’s sleep." Tony said.
"Just let me grab my stuff and I'll be out of here."
Gordon collected his belongings, climbed into his Silverado and took off down the logging road. Tony quickly gathered his safety equipment, lunch cooler and cell phone then set off towards the harvester. He climbed up into the cab, got himself situated and hit the ignition. The harvester growled to life.
Once he was out in the cut, Tony felt at home. In a swift motion, he guided the harvester head toward a tree where it latched on to it. A high-powered chainsaw whined to life and cut the tree off at the base in a matter of seconds. The head then turned to its side while delimbing knives reached around the tree. Two feed-rollers hugged the tree tightly and then turned to feed the tree through the delimbing knives. Branches were sheared off and once the desired length of tree had been fed through, the feed-rollers stopped. The chainsaw then cut through the tree and the desired length fell to the ground. The process repeated until the entire tree had been cut. A harvester working full tilt was spellbinding to someone who could appreciate harvesting technology but it was horror to a tree hugger. To Tony, it was a beautiful sight; especially since the more trees he cut, the more he got paid.
Tony had been working the controls for close to two hours when he became aware of the pressure in his bladder. He bent forward and tried to position his legs in a way that wouldn't push on the bladder but it was no use. He maneuvered the harvester head gently on the ground and leaving the engine running, he opened the door of the cab and carefully made his way down the side of the harvester. He decided to hop down the last two feet to the ground but one of his boots landed unevenly on a freshly cut stump and he fell, twisting his ankle in the process.
"Son of a whore!" he yelled out his voice quickly being eaten up by the trees. He rotated his ankle and decided that it wasn't broken. He slowly stood up and tested it out. His ankle throbbed but it supported him. He unzipped his pants and began to urinate on the tree stump.
The sun was just above the tree line casting long shadows over the areas that Gordon had already cut. The fallen trees and stumps created mutated and deformed shadows giving the cut an uneasy character. Tony thought nothing of it though as he zipped up his pants and climbed back into the cab.
He drove the harvester closer to the tree line he was cutting and was about to grab onto a particularly thick and large spruce tree when the harvester suddenly lurched to the right side. A loud scraping sound pierced the cab and then the left side suddenly dropped back down to the ground.
"Holy shit!" Tony yelled as he opened the door to the cab and climbed back down.
Tony performed a quick walk around of the harvester and he soon found the cause of the lurching and scraping. A large rock had been dragged out of its resting place by the harvester and now sat just behind it with white and yellow paint scrapes over it. Nearly three quarters of the rock was covered with darkened soil and a few salamanders scurried off to find refuge elsewhere.
Tony climbed up into the cab and grabbed a flashlight. Jumping back down, he was careful not to land on a stump this time. He got on his hands and knees and shined the flashlight underneath the harvester. He could see deep scrapes and dents from the rock but there didn't seem to be any real damage. He looked back at the rock and something caught his eye.
Underneath the darkened soil, there appeared to be some scratches. He wiped off some of the soil and came to the realization that they weren't scratches but carvings. There were some figures drawn, one of which was very different from the others. Not wanting to waste too much time, he took his phone out and checked the GPS. He saved the location in his phone and then took two pictures of the carvings before sliding the phone back in his pocket. He then returned to the cab and resumed cutting.
The rhythmic bellowing of the engine helped Tony to get into the groove of cutting again and he forgot all about the rock. Darkness crept up fast and he switched on the floodlights attached to the outside of the harvester, giving him a good ten-foot radius of visibility. The rock he had driven over soon fell behind into darkness as he moved the large machine forward.
***
A scale-covered hand with three fingers and a claw on each side grabbed onto the rock pulling the rest of its body out of the hole in which the rock used to rest. With no eyes, it existed in darkness, but a strong ammonia smell filled its sharp nostrils. Crawling on all fours with an incredible agility it soon came across the source of the ammonia smell. Pushing its nostrils close to the ground, the smell was recognized as human and it immediately became ravenous. Although hearing was an issue, a strange and loud noise piqued its interest. Cautiously, it began to search out the source of the sound.
***
It wasn't long before Tony's stomach growled. Calculating how much had been cut Tony determined that he was on pace to meet his quota and decided to take a break. Opening his cooler he took out a tuna sandwich and bottle of Gatorade. The tuna sandwich quickly disappeared in a matter of bites and guzzling down the Gatorade helped to eliminate the fish taste from his mouth. Tossing the empty bottle to the floor of the cab, Tony leaned back in the chair and stretched.
Before he resumed the controls, Tony checked his fuel gauges and could not believe what he saw. It was showing that he was almost on empty.
"Old Gordon must've forgotten to fill it up,” he said.
Hoping that there was enough left in the tank to get back to the turnaround, he raised the harvester head and turned it toward the road. Tony was almost thrown out of the cab as the harvester drove over stumps, small rocks and other deviations in the ground. A warning light flashed on to warn him the harvester was just about out of fuel but he was almost to the road and a wave of relief rolled over him.
The harvester pulled onto the road and came to a stop beside the service trailer. Turning the engine off but leaving the lights on, Tony climbed out of the cab and started to make his way toward the trailer when he heard dripping. Tony approached the harvester and peered underneath. Something was dripping from somewhere onto the ground and suddenly he realized that Gordon had indeed filled up. Going over the rock must have busted a hole in the fuel tank as there was no denying there was a fuel leak.
"And there goes the ballgame," he said.
He stalked over to the trailer, yanked it open and grabbed a spill kit. He brought it over to the harvester and began setting it up to absorb the fuel as it trickled out. With that complete, he took out his phone and called the on-call heavy machine mechanic Carl Copeland. It only rang once.
"Copeland."
"Hey Carl, its Tony Barrymore out on logging road 17. I got myself a fuel leak."
"Shit. What happened? Did you hit something?"
"I ran over a large rock a few hours back but when I checked it out there didn't appear to be any damage to the fuel tank or any , but it’s leaking now." Tony said.
"Okay. Is it a bad leak? Can you make a makeshift plug and carry on or do you need me to come out there?"
Tony squatted down and looked under the harvester again. "You better come out, it's leaking pretty good. I already have a spill kit set up but I'm not sure how much leaked out in the cut."
"I'll be there in about thirty minutes. Hang tight."
***
As Tony waited for Carl to show up, something blindly made its way towards the road. It had discovered a new smell, one that smelled sweet, but at the same time processed and refined. It was following the trail of leaked fuel. At first, it had been confused when the loud noise that had once been a distance away had suddenly turned and passed it heading in the opposite direction. Afterwards it had picked up the smell again and began to follow it. As it got closer to the road, more smells began to fill its nostrils; including the smell of the human.
***
Tony was sitting in his truck smoking a cigarette when he saw headlights pierce the dark skyline and Carl's truck soon came over the rise. Tony waved as Carl drove by and stopped his truck beside the harvester. Stomping out his cigarette, he followed.
Carl was overweight and always had a lingering smell of hydraulic fluid and body odor surrounding him. His coveralls barely fit him and no one knew the last time he had washed them.
"Morning Carl."
Carl looked at his watch. "I guess you could say that."
He walked around his truck to the harvester and very awkwardly maneuvered his way underneath to take a look at the leak. His heavy breathing seemed particularly loud and it seemed to echo. He crawled out and with an effort pulled himself to his feet.
"So you said you hit a rock?" he asked.
"Yeah. A big one that had some strange carvings on it." Tony replied.
"No shit. You did a real number under there, it’s no wonder the rock was all carved up."
"No, no, these were actual carvings as if someone had actually used a tool and carved into them. You know, like those cave drawings. Here I took a picture of them." Tony started to get his phone out.
"Don't have the time to look at rock scratches. Let's get this leak fixed so I can... oh God..." Carl grabbed his gut and farted. "This volcano no longer appears to be dormant."
"You alright?"
"Yeah I'm fine. I'll just have to take a dump in a little bit."
They gathered the necessary tools and replacement parts out of the service trailer and went to work. They had been working about ten minutes when Carl's stomach rumbled and he suddenly crawled out from under the trailer.
"Hey, you okay?" Tony called out.
"This volcano's active!" Carl replied. He ran to his truck, took a roll of toilet paper out of the front seat and bolted into the cut. He quickly slid his coveralls off and squatted just in time to be hit by explosive diarrhea. The creature that had followed the fuel leak broke out into a bizarre set of goose bumps, as it smelled Carl nearby. There were lots of smells coming off of this human, but it didn't care as it was craving what the human had inside of him. It carefully approached Carl and when the sense of smell became almost overpowering, it placed its weight onto its back legs preparing to pounce. A small stinger protruded from each of its palms and the claws were pulled back as wide as possible. When Carl stood up to wipe, it leapt onto him.
Carl let out a brief cry as a large body knocked him over with an inhuman amount of force. The stingers pierced his skin and Carl quickly became limp. He was still awake and breathing, but he could not move nor make a sound.
"Carl, you need a hand?" Tony called out laughing.
Another human.
Tony walked to the edge of the road with a flashlight and shined it around. When the beam of light found Carl, it also found something else.
It was the size of a man, but incredibly thin. Grey scales covered its entire body and it had no hair whatsoever. It was on all fours but its front limbs were drastically larger than the back ones and it seemed to rest on the front of the knuckles with its fingers curled underneath like a gorilla. The two claws on each side of the hands remained in a position to strike. The head was the shape of a human but a large plate-like feature protruded from the back and covered most of the creature's upper torso, similar to the plate on a triceratops. There were no eyes at all but a unique set of nostrils that were constantly flaring. The creature's mouth ran vertically up the face with a strong set of jaws outlining it and a set of teeth bent outwards running up the lips.
Tony immediately felt his bowels give out on him at the sight of this completely inhuman thing before him. He dropped the flashlight and began to run. The creature had no vocal cords, but if it had, it would have roared as it gave chase. It broke into a gallop and it smelled Tony's fear even over the smell of shit.
"What the Hell? Oh Jesus!" Tony cried. He didn’t dare turn around, knowing it was right behind him. His only hope was to reach his truck.
His breathing became heavy and clogged with sobs. His rolled ankle was screaming in pain and was starting to slow him down ever so slightly.
Almost there, he thought. Almost. It leapt onto his back and they fell to the ground in a rolling heap, his cell phone flying from his pocket onto the road. Tony wrestled and swung his arms as best he could but it stung him. He felt something warm and foreign enter his blood stream; his arms became heavy and soon he lost complete feeling in them. The creature grabbed hold of him and began to drag him back into the cut.
Tony did not know how long it had been dragging him when it suddenly put him down. He saw that the large rock with the carvings was nearby. The creature crawled into the hole, where the large rock had been and continued to pull Tony in with it. The hole gave way to a large cave-like structure that was incredibly humid and wet with a smell that reminded Tony of morning breath and the rendering plant in Westwood. A wave of nausea hit him, but whatever had been injected into his system did not allow him to throw up. It was completely dark and the creature placed him on a pile of rocks. It then crawled back up and out through the hole.
It was gone for quite a long time. During that time Tony's eyes adjusted as much as they could to the darkness. There wasn't much to see in the cave but he did notice large piles of rocks lining the bottom of the cave walls. He looked at one rock next to his boot and the realization of what it was made him want to scream but he couldn't. The rock next to his boot was actually a human skull and the piles of rock lining the cave walls were human bones. The eye sockets of the skull seemed to stare right into Tony's eyes and the skull seemed to be grinning, almost mocking him.
A small amount of light was beginning to spill into the cave as the sun began to rise. Tony thought he could hear birds chirping but he couldn't tell. If they had been chirping, they quickly stopped. A large shadow loomed over the hole and something heavy fell onto the ground nearby. Tony could see and smell that it was Carl. The creature crawled in scaling the sides of the cave like a spider. When it reached the floor of the cave, it stopped and seemed to sniff the air. Appearing to be satisfied with what it smelled, it made its way to Carl. With the light now streaming in the hole Tony could see everything.
Using the claws on its hands, the creature cut away Carl’s dirty clothing and sliced into the skin on his forearm. Carl's eyes screamed in agony as he looked at Tony, his eyes pleading to him for help. The creature then put its mouth against the wound and the teeth dug into the skin and muscle tissue like fishhooks. The jaws flared out exposing the bone in a sickening wet crack. A sliding sheath like that of a mosquito shot out through the mouth and penetrated into the bone. There was a slurping sound as it began to ingest Carl's bone marrow.
***
Gordon felt his jaw pop as he stretched his mouth open to yawn, turning his Silverado down Logging Road 17. His truck fared better than Tony's in the deep ruts and Gordon was so used to them by now that he hardly noticed them. He drove in silence. The only sound was his tires kicking up dirt and debris. He pulled his truck in next to Tony's and turned off the engine. He dug his phone out and dialed Tony's number.
He opened his door and got out placing his phone to his ear. When it started to ring Gordon was surprised to hear it nearby. Tony's familiar "Eye of the Tiger" ring tone was playing somewhere close. He walked past the Ranger and the ringing got louder. He saw the harvester parked beside the service trailer as well as Carl's truck. He then saw Tony's cell phone lying on the road. He ended the call and put his phone away while bending down to pick up Tony's.
The sound of an engine coming over the rise made him look up from the phone. A red Jeep with the top off came bouncing into view and stopped a few meters in front of him. Gordon recognized the driver when he got out as the protestor from the previous morning, Harden Sylliboy.
"Good morning, Mister Sylliboy." Gordon said.
Harden nodded. "Mister Norwood." He looked past him at the harvester and the empty truck. "Rough night cutting?"
"Beats me. I just got here. I haven't had a chance to ask anyone yet." Gordon looked down at the phone then back up at Harden. "I found Tony's cell phone though."
"Who's Tony?"
"The night operator."
Harden nodded in acknowledgement then proceeded to walk past Gordon toward the harvester. Gordon turned on the cell phone and noticed that it was still set in camera mode. He accessed the gallery and looked at the few pictures Tony had taken of the carved up rock.
"Is it normal for both the operator and mechanic to not be on site?" Harden asked.
Gordon shook his head. "Nope."
"With the spill kit underneath the harvester I'd say they had a fuel leak." Harden said.
Gordon didn't reply at first and just stared at the pictures. After an awkward minute of silence, he looked up at Harden. "What was the exact reason you didn't want us cutting up here?" He looked back down at the pictures. "Did it have anything to do with this?" He passed the phone to Harden who looked at the pictures, his face changing from one of confidence into one of fear.
"This is your operator's phone?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Where did you find it?"
"On the road there." Gordon pointed out the spot.
Harden walked over to the spot and started to study the ground. The continuing change of his expression made Gordon uneasy. Harden was looking at the footprints on the ground, both the human footprints and those that belonged to something else.
"Was this land sacred?" Gordon asked quietly.
Harden followed the tracks into the cut, stopped and looked out at the land. "According to legend there was once an evil so pure in this land that it manifested itself as a living creature. This creature attacked and consumed my people." He paused and looked at Gordon. "Not so much consumed them but drained the life from them. It fed on their bone marrow. It would capture its prey; keep it alive for days while slowly draining the marrow from the bones.
"Finally my ancestors had had enough and decided to take a stand. They hunted this creature down and were able to defeat it. They trapped it inside an underground cave and covered the entrance with a large stone. Carvings were driven into the rock to serve as warnings. The same carvings that are on the rock in your friend's pictures, but the rock appears to have been overturned.
"I found tracks on the road, human tracks and the tracks of something else. It came from the cut onto the road where there was a struggle. Drag marks then lead back into the cut."
Harden stared long and hard at Gordon who was trying to process what was just explained to him.
"I warned you not to cut up here, Mister Norwood." Harden walked past Gordon, handing him the phone.
"Where are you going?" Gordon asked.
"If the legend is true I do not want to stick around and find out exactly what was buried in that cave." He climbed into his jeep. "And if I were you, Mister Norwood, I would not wait around here too long nor would I go looking for your friends." He turned the key in the ignition. "Not without more men and guns."
Harden put his jeep in reverse and backed up until his back tires rolled into the cut. He gave one final look at Gordon, one that was a mixture of pity and frustration, and then drove off over the rise and out of view. It was at that moment that Gordon realized how quiet it was. He could not hear a single animal or insect.
He looked out into the cut and immediately felt a fear, the likes of which he had never known before. He ran for his truck, jumped inside and started punching a number into his phone when something out in the cut caught his eye.
"Triple L Lumber Camp 4 Emergency Services." a voice said on the other end of the phone.
It was an animal covered in grey skin making its way towards the road with an unnatural set of movements. Gordon felt the phone drop from his hand and bounce somewhere under the seat. In his many years of harvesting he had encountered bears, moose and other animals but this was so different and unfamiliar that his body did not know how to react. It had reached the road and stood up on its hind legs appearing to sniff the air. Its head then pointed directly at Gordon's truck and it began to run.
Without thinking Gordon started the truck and slammed the accelerator to the floor. The tires spun before finally catching and the truck launched itself into the clearing while he cut hard to the right on the steering wheel. He bounced in his seat as the truck drove over a few small stumps and imperfections in the ground before he was able to get it back onto the road. Once he was flying down the road he kept checking his rearview mirror to try to see where the thing was. He could see it not too far back and if he had to describe the movement he guessed that it looked like a combination of an ape and a running greyhound dog. Gordon felt his chest begin to tighten and his breathing became more difficult but he did not ease up on the gas. He watched in the rearview mirror as he was slowly increasing the distance between himself and the thing.
Honk!
Gordon thought he heard a noise yet he could not pull his eyes away from the rearview mirror, not while that thing was running after him.
HONK!
Oh god, that sounds like a truck! He thought. Turn away from the mirror and look at the road! Turn away from the mirror and-
Gordon's world went black. The Silverado slammed into the passenger side of the logging truck and immediately went airborne. It made one and half revolutions as it flipped end over end before crashing into the trees along the side of the logging road. The roof caved in as it landed upside down and Gordon's body was ripped in two by the steering column. The driver of the logging truck, who had veered to the left at the very last minute and had gotten his truck under control stopped and immediately called for emergency vehicles.
He hopped out of his truck and ran around the front of it to get a look at where the Silverado had landed. The overweight driver with a greasy brown mullet stared with shock at the now burning wreckage. Flames were dancing from the bottom of the Silverado and were licking the sky as small columns of smoke began to rise.
"Oh my god..." the driver said running his hands through his hair. "Hello? Are you alright?"
He began walking closer to the wreck, completely unaware of the grey-skinned creature galloping towards him.
"Don't worry! Help is on the way! Can you hear me? Help is-" The driver was knocked to the ground by a tremendous force. He felt a hard pinch as his skin was pierced by something twice and as he lay on the ground he could see something with grey skin smelling around the burning Silverado. It lost its interest after a few seconds and returned to the driver, grabbing his leg and dragging him down the road. Try as he might, the driver couldn’t emit the scream stuck in his throat.