The Hunt

The dead deer bounced on his shoulder every step down the trail, it's blood dripped on him, his shoulder neck and back had started to ache, he shifted the dead weight and trudged on down the uneven trail.

The trail opened up into a mild clearing in the bright afternoon. He looked to his left and noted a clear sightline to a Ridge that overlooked the clearing, perfect he thought, he hefted the deer and moved to a tree in the centre of the clearing.

He dumped the deer at the base of the tree and unslung his pack grabbing and uncoiling a length of paracord from the pack. He wrapped a length of one end around the head of the deer at the base of the antlers and knotted it, he threw the other length of paracord over a sturdy bough of the tree and looped it again and hauled the deer up knocking dew and frost from the leaves.

Walking under the bough he circled the tree twice with the paracord tying it off in a hitch to suspend the deer at around chest height. Having already poisoned his bait with a syringe, he slashed and sawed the deer down the middle spilling guts and blood into the air, his bait was set.

He flicked the blood off his knife and wiped it against the deer's fine fur before backtracking down the path, he came to the stream where he washed the blood from his knife and sleeve in the icy water, it numbed his hands instantly and sent them stinging when he pulled them out.

Having completed that he back tracked down the path and circled around the path to the point upwind on the ridge overlooking the clearing he spied earlier. He dumped his pack and retrieved his entrenching tool and two tarps, he looked up into the sky judging with his hand how much daylight he had left, 2 and a half to 3 hours. Perfect he though just enough. Setting the tarp on the top of the Ridge and

Flicking the tool into a shovel he started cutting the solid dirt into a grid and placing the cubes of dirt onto his tarp, when he hit his desired depth he took the two corners of the tarp and dragged them down the blind side of the ridge line. Returning to his pack he grabbed a foam insulation pad and set it in his hide before staking a length of paracord at the foot end and trailing a length down the middle of the pad. He threw his second tarp over his foam pad and paracord and staked the back corners down.

He went down the blind side of the Ridge and broke off two curved arched uneven branches, he tied them together in an uneven arch and led the paracord under the tarp over the uneven arch which he stuck into the ground and tied to the front of the tarp creating the entrance to his hide, he took the length of paracord he trailed over the arch and staked it to the ground. Lifing the middle of the tarp of his hide.

He then took the leaf litter and debris he scraped away before and scattered it over his camouflaged tarp breaking up the silhouette, he then retrieved a couple of leafy branches from the blind side of the Ridge and used them to break up the silhouette of the entrance of his hide, he retreived his pack and rifle and shoved his pack into his hide.

Next he set about creating a loophole in the bush in front of him overlooking the clearing, he slowly bent the branches and leaves forward, cutting them at the back with his knife gently to minimise movement, clearing a small path for both his bullet trajectory and scope.

Carefully he Reverse crawled into his hide, applying a shroud to his head and over the back end of the scope of his rifle, he checked through the scope and could clearly oversea the clearing, using his thumb he gently manipulated his bolt up, back and then drove it forward, catching the 308 round from the internal magazine and driving it forward into the chamber, he clicked the bolt down locking the round in, gun check, bait, check, hide, check, trap set. His rifle was zeroed for about 100 yards his target was about 200 yards away, he knew that his rounds at that distance usually struck about 4 inches low, he adjusted the two minutes of angle on his scope upward, he looked side to side judging the wind, dead still, shouldn't be any lateral effect. He let his mind wander as he watched through the scope as night fell.

He sighted through his scope from his hide upwind of his bait that lay in the valley. From his position on the side of the valley he commanded a solid view of both the valley and the deer carcus he had poisoned. He was determined to kill whatever had left the scene at the McDonald's farm, he owed it to them, to the man that had taken him in and his wife and his two daughters.

He had a light ghillie shroud with some disguised netting on the entrance of his hide that looked like moss hanging from a tree, it was late afternoon with that golden sense of finality, his hide set up to ensure the sun was never in his face. He would stay until he killed this thing, whatever it was, human or not.

He gently lifted the bolt of his rifle, easing it back to check there was a round in there before sliding it forward again and locking it down for the third time in as many hours. A routine of scanning and checking to keep his mind alert, a ghostly scrape from his thumb told him the safety was off. He surveyed his bait through the scope, the precise thin black crosshair playing gently over the carcus hung by its antlers from a branch, the rope tied off to the tree. It swayed slightly to the left in a wind he now accounted for with a slight twist to the dial on his rifle.

Time passed, minute by minute, the shadows grew in length. The sun moved in an arc to his left, the true cold settled in. Frost settling on the ground in a true cold that could rob a man of his heat when he lay still and leave him a frozen solid and dead he thanked god for his foam pad as a shiver ran through him.

He eased the bolt back to make sure there was a round in its chamber and checked the safety was off with his thumb. Satisfied, he checked his sectors before settling on his bait, he panned across the hanging deer with its guts no longer steaming on the ground below it, despite the cold and his mind drifted back to the scene at the farm.

There was blood everywhere, the bodies had been hung from tendons in their legs in the barn, their skin had been scrubbed away with boiling water and steel wool, the hands and feet chopped off, the carcuses then beheaded and split in two, the guts allowed to pool at their feet, heads set on the blood stiffened hay watching their split bodies rot and be eaten by flies, whatever this was it was malevolent, the only hint of intruder was one set of massive clawed tracks in the blood, a similar amount of blood and five missing cattle on a fenced off half acre with a destroyed fence leading into the woods, to a trail, a trail that led to a clearing. No atv tracks, no car tracks, whatever had killed the cattle had carried them out of there by hand, each of the cattle between 500 kilograms and a ton.

Despite the bodies being found days later the police dogs had been used to track the assumed human fiend, they tracked the blood and inhuman sometimes bipedal tracks to this valley, but lost the scent and tracks as they passed through an abandoned fertiliser factory beside a river another kilometre further into the woods. That site had been initially staked out but then abandoned several weeks ago.

The local newspapers concluded a bear was responsible given the similarity of the tracks to a bear and a bounty was set up. He doubted a bear had ever tortured 3 people to death and dressed them the same way one would a pig. No sign of the cattle, the amount of blood suggested they were dead as well, although what could carry five nearly a tone each dead weight cattle more than 7 kilometres up an uneven trail, that was a feat impressive for a bear. Whatever he was hunting it was strong, and strong for a long time.

Movement amid his automatic routine of checks caught his eye and snapped him out of his thoughts, a fox was approaching his bait, it had an odd gait and seemed to move faster than a fox would normally. He considered scaring it off with a warning shot, but it approached the guts and not the poisoned carcus and began to lap and pick at them.

He left it alone, he would scare it off if it approached the carcus, he didn't want to poison the fox or tip off any malevolent predator watching that he had a clear line of sight and a military grade 308 sighted and ranged on the carcus.

His breath caught, the bushes next to the carcus moved, no the bush moved, then changed shape and colour, no the bush was still there behind this new shape, the shape straightened up, it was larger than man sized about 8 feet tall, it had backward jointed legs and appeared to be able to change its skins colour and texture like a chameleon or octopus. It had powerful looking hands with claws similar to a bear, it's head seemingly had airsacks and a series of writing tentacles and beak where it's mouth should have been. The fox having just noticed fled, the creature looked after it before looking at the deer carcus. It tilted its head.

Camera flash quick it whipped its hand around in a strike and tore the deer's foreleg clean off, holy shit the hunter said under his breath, fucker is strong, if this thing was fast he had better kill it with his first shot because if it got the jump on him it could rip him apart and there wouldn't be much he could do, it would be like a child trying to fight a smart malevolent bear.

His hand brushed his side to make sure his 1911 was there, he would still want to be quick on the draw, surprise was everything.

As he focused on the creature and drew a breath in, another came into view from behind the dear carcus out of the lengthening shadows and tore a handful of flesh with the grip of its claw alone from the deer's back jamming it greedily into its cuttlefish like mouth, grip alone, this thing would crush him instantly if it could do that to a deer's back, and there were two of them.

He let them feed, surprised at the speed at which they devoured the deer, they seemed to be communicating, and posturing to one another, indicating some sort of malevolent intelligence and social hierarchy, they stood chest to chest sizing each other up before one backed down.

The one that backed down faded away into the shadows, the other grabbed the deer by its horn, easily lifting the remains of the carcus up one handed and slashed three times at the deer's stout neck severing its head.

It played with the head for a second before leaving it hanging by its horn on the bough.

He took a slow breath and then slowly let it ease out, finger tightening on the trigger, he placed the thin cross on its centre mass of the humanoid beast and squeezed the trigger letting the shot surprise him, a deafening bang and the rifle kicked reassuringly into his shoulder and then an instant later he saw the shot punch a neat little hole the things narrow ribcage before punching out a fist of hamburged lung out the back as it spun and dropped spraying out a red mist behind the creature and showering the bush with ichor.

The thing recovered rapidly springing to its feet as it moved five steps lightning fast before it collapsed, blood spraying in beats from the things chest, flaring out on the grass and dirt of the clearing, it tried to rise but failed, collapsed from its half prone position and finally laid still, the last of its life forming a stinking pool beneath its whitening and cooling corpse, as the heat of its life caused steam to rise in the gloom.

What the fuck he said to himself again. He watched for 2 further hours in silence. Waiting to see if the other creature would return, when it didn't he slid himself out of the hide and got to his feet in the lengthening shadows.

He approached the kill slowly, taking 5 steps, crouching and examining his surroundings, he doubted it would matter, he would be unlikely to see these creature before it was on top of him, he hoped there was only the two he'd seen, that would make one dead and the other poisoned and hopefully weakened.

He crouched again surveying the green woods, bushes and scrub either side of the trail. They seemed to have a rigid yet skeletal musculature surrounded by a stretchy layer of flesh, similar to an octopus chromatophores allowing it to at will change the colour and texture of their body for camouflage. There could be one in front if him and he wouldn't know, he needed thermal imaging, he cursed himself for leaving his thermal scope and drone at home. It stands to reason the swelling and shrinking of the chromatophores would cause extra blood flow and therefore heat up the bodies of these predators rendering them white hot in the black and white world. Unless of course they were cold blooded like chameleons relying on sun to warm their blood. Things he couldn't assume. He moved forward toward the clearing.

He finally approached the small clearing where the dead creature lay. It was stranger dead than it was alive, leaner, longer, clawed hands and feet, it also appeared to have a vestigial thumb claw protruding from the wrist it was inches long and razor sharp.

There could be more he thought. I need a plan, I should have stayed in the hide and seen if I could've gotten a shot off at another. Chances were that the other was down by now, bleeding from eyes and nose because of a haemorrhaging brain from the poison he had injected into the deer, but what if there were more, these things were strange, insectoid but not, human but not, the cruel curved exoskeletons of their faces seemed demonic, the tentacles implying they were made in the image of a darker God, some horrible power from beyond the stars. He considered trapping the body, oh to be at war again with wire and frag grenades, a directional claymore, a stake tied to a piece of paracord looped through the turned pin of a grenade with a shortened fuse and staked down at the trail on the opposite side of the clearing, covered in leaves and light bush, but no he was a civillian now. No willows for windlass traps, soil was soft but it would take too long to create a pit trap with stakes. He had fuel on his dirt bike down the trail but it was loud. That seemed to be his best bet, he would douse the clearing in fuel and string up the dead one in the middle. See if he could lure them in, ignite the fuel somehow with a torch or flare, burn them.

Before he could even think, something moved to his right, he spun drawing his pistol but a five times stronger hand grabbed his own and lifted him easily up into the air, he resisted trying to draw his knife with his other hand to bring it to bear on the creatures neck or pectoral artery, brachial artery or radial artery on its lengthy arm but too suddenly his mind was shut like a clamp as his free hand died scrabbling at his knife, his nose started bleeding, his jaw clamped shut on his tongue severing the tip, blood filled his mouth trickling down his throat and through his clenched teeth. He could not move, he could not breathe, he could not control his diaphragm muscles to expand his chest.

He tried drawing his knife but his arm was rigid as if he were having a stroke or a cramp, his mind in pain, the face loomed close to his, death, a voice started in his head. What are you he thought the long skull huge, eyes, crest and tentacle hovering before him.

Oh you hairless monkey we were always here, we are closer to what you call demons, your language is.... primative limited, no .... emotion or art, your sense of morality an amusing illusion, at odds with your instincts and nature, your concept of time and reality like a child with a rattle. It had spoken but not aloud, it had spoken directly into his mind.

It continued tilting its head, the sacks inflating on the sides of its head.

The being you killed was millennia old, for that you will suffer, you think why, because we can, we are your betters when we awoke we expected worship, not this hypocritical monument to fables.

He gritted his teeth, and thought of the poisoning of the deer, anything to force an edge, force a mistake free his mind.

Still you fight, admirable will, what's this you want to show me something monkey?.

Just then it coughed blood on his face from its beak and spasmed, it's grip on his mind weakened for a second, he drew his knife and slashed it across the side of the demons neck.

It dropped him grasping it's neck and spasming from poison in between coughs, immediately he drew and pointed his 45 at centre mass and mag dumped the monster, light and deafening sound marking the night, he missed several times his arm becoming rigid and then not as the bullets struck and he fought the suffering creature for control of his mind in between the hammering impact of the 45 slugs, struggling to draw a halting breath. The hammer fell on an empty chamber, and his arm became rigid again, it was still alive.

Youuuu daaare to... the pain in his head got worse, the blood started to flow from his ears and eyes and nose. His vision started to redden and grey and shrink like backing away from a window.

His teeth reclenched his vision greyed more, with death approaching, he thought of the barn, and thought you're coming with me.

You... would have suffered for at least half your mortal life.. now I will have to settle for your death.

It staggered toward him, stumbling to one side and falling to a knee.

Got 2 of you, you pussy, so called demons. The pain in his head increased suddenly and sharply.

We have killed cities worth of your kind, before your understanding of history there were vast cities, cities that honoured the true gods.

Your gods are dead and so are you, he thought

The creature tried to rise from its knee, failed, and collapsed.

He felt the movement return to his limbs, he picked up the 45, flicked out the mag, flicking it out to the right and slid another one in racking a round into the chamber.

He spat blood, he snorted and spat out more, he blinked back even more wiping it from his eyes, before rising and approaching the dying figure, and lining uo the painted front sight on the being's head.

Murder for no other reason than you think you're better.

The thing laughed in his head, fainter now, much weaker, dying.

Not just murder, the images thoughts and smells of the murder of the family and more besides, many more flooded his mind, people with bronze swords, cave men with primative clubs, buildings and monoliths larger than sky scrapers covered in human skins, cities so vast they completely covered deserts, that and more besides shot agonizingly through his mind.

He saw a vast shrouded figure that exists between the spaces in a place he couldnt comprehend, its many eyes turned to him and regarded him for a second nearly stopping his heart out of fear, the rules and rituals for its blessing laid out over millennia and forgotten races through his mind, the sacrifices it demanded, the correct precise markings and tabernacles and language, then further besides, back to a childhood, a human childhood, a ritual involving sex, murder, betrayal and defilement, a painful transformation, a pact, a price to be paid for the failure of death.

Then a man, pale and bleeding in camouflage, a hunting rifle over his shoulder, a strange aura about him, something about his faith he couldn't quite put his finger on, the promise of future and peace and redemption, something he had initially dismissed out of hand, now it pointed the gun at him, the fear of death struck, the fear of what was to come, the lie of everything that dark thing had promised him for his sacrifices, for himself, what it would take from him next, now in that dark place between places and time, how it would feed on him forever more. The hairless ape thought one more time of the family they had took their fun with and the pistol fired.

He was suddenly rammed back into his own mind, the top of the monsters skull splayed backward in a triangular pattern across the clearing, the blood black.

He collapsed to his knees, a growing pressure in his mind, the knowledge of the one between spaces, its will, its slumbering, he tried not to think about it but found he couldn't, comprehension of its vast might, of the power offered by its rituals and sacrifices, of the costs for failing it, he could feel its presence, its hunger, he would never be rid of it, he said a hail Mary and it helped, but the faith of the religion as it ought to be and actual knowledge of a vast godlike entity that had answered prayers, sacrifices and rituals in an extremely timely and direct manner was something else.

He didn't know its will, he couldn't trust its beneficience, he couldnt trust in its values or divine plan, it had seemed capricious in its goals, self serving, rather than for the betterment of all, for the love of all, and his death may not be the end of his dealings with it.

Worse still he would live with this knowledge until he died at which point it may attempt to claim him for killing 2 of its apostles. Apostles who despite their faith, rituals, devotion and sacrifices, despite the blessings it had endowed upon them, it had seemingly aloofly allowed to perish, knowing capriciously what it would mean for them.

He made up his mind, he returned to his dirt bike, grabbing the bottle from a satchel, he had trouble with the bottle in the past, the alcohol helped blur the faces he had seen through the scope, faces he had once been proud that he had killed, he drained half of it. It helped, it deadened the sharp edge, just as it dulled all of the malnourished brown faces of the savages he had ended in war. It helped.

He dragged the long corpses to the middle of the clearing, doused their unholy flesh in petrol and burned them, he watched them blacken and curl up, he took a branch and beat their ashes and bones apart, scattering them across the clearing, the bounty be damned he couldn't inflict on others the knowledge of a potential god, he had to ensure it was forgotten, that it became disinterested in the soul of humanity, and slumbered on. He finished the bottle, and trudged back to his motorbike, weaving drunkenly back to his cabin and solitude.