The Ravine

The next morning Martin awoke to the sound of a door slamming shut. When he opened his eyes, Matson and the other officer were there to greet him.

“Rise and shine.” Henry walked towards Martin, handing him a cup of coffee. “Breakfast of champions.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly eleven,” Matson replied.

“We wanted you to sleep in a bit. Need you sharp for the search.” Henry added. “Gonna find your wife and son today.”

Martin smiled, soaking in their confidence. He took a drink of coffee.

“Yes, we are.”

The four got into the APD’s 4-wheel drive patrol truck and headed out of town and up the old logging road. Thanks to the vehicle’s off-road prowess, the slippery parts of these hills weren’t too great an obstacle.

“Damn fine day for a 4-wheel drive, eh Martin,” Henry chimed in.

“Imagine taking your bike through this shit.” The officer’s chuckled. “We might have to come looking for you.”

The afternoon wore on quickly as the four retraced their steps from prior days’ searches. By the time they started heading back to where the road originally narrowed, evening had set in and the expecting chill of night slowly followed.

“Shhh.” Henry broke the conversing amongst the officers. “You hear that?” Everyone grew silent. In the near-distance there was the sound of wolves howling. Chills ran up and down Martin’s spine. Henry’s stories were true. Somehow a pack of wolves had survived up here with scarce food sources.

“This way.” Henry ambled forward on down the slope, correcting himself occasionally as he hit slippery spots. The others were on his heels, flashlights bouncing up and down with every stride. Up ahead, where the road started to turn, the officers stopped, surrounding Henry. Martin soon joined them.

“What? What!?”

“Look.” Henry shined his flashlight at his feet.

“Wolf tracks.”

Henry’s flashlight crept forward and to the right. Henry followed, stopping a short distance ahead at the shoulder of the road: Right where it dropped off into a steep embankment. The other formed a line where he stood.

“I can’t believe it. Look!”

Martin saw it and his light joined the other. Glass, shimmering like a diamond in response to the beams of light coming from the four men.

“This is where the car must have slid off the road,” Matson added. “How had we not seen this before? We must have passed by here a hundred times.”

“The rain,” the other officer chimed in. “All that dust we must have kicked up on top of what was already there. That’s why the specialists we hired never found it.”

The others murmured in agreement.

“We gotta go down,” Martin added. “I gotta go down.”

“Lock arms,” Matson commanded. “We go down one at a time. One after the other. Fucker’s steep. We don’t want to be needing rescue on account of haste.”

All four locked arms and slowly fought gravity and the unstable slope. Part way down their lights caught something else. It was a stuffed bear, torn to shreds.

“Bear-Boo,” Martin whispered.

“That’s Jameson’s!” Martin’s heart leapt with hope and fear as he ambled faster down the embankment, nearly pushing the others off balance.

“Hey,” Matson warned. “I know you wanna get down there, but we gotta do it safely. Keep your damned composure.”

Martin took a deep breath.

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

The two continued down, closing in on the canopy. They could hear scratching and sniffing and Matson stopped the line. He shined his light on the other officer and he nodded back. Both pulled their guns and readied them to fire. As the four broke through the canopy the alpha was scratching through the dirt, and pushing its paw and muzzle inch by inch into the front windshield.

The car!

Matson shined his light on the mud-caked sedan and then on the monster, whose snout and right paw had now disappeared into the vehicle. At the reaction of being exposed it tore itself free from the windshield and snarled and snapped at the four men, its betas following suit. The two officers fired, connecting one shot to its shoulder. The monster yelped and ran at breakneck speed into the night, the betas swiftly behind it. When the men knew that it was safe, they hurried down to the sedan. As they got closer they could hear movement, but they couldn’t distinguish exactly what it was. The four moved around the front and rear of the sedan, shining their lights into whatever pockets they could find, but made out only a indistinguishable silhouette through the mud-caked windows. Martin crept closer. Matson shook his head in disapproval, but Martin reassured him. The two officers readied to fire once more.

“Carol?” Martin called out in a soothing, nurturing tone.

“Honey, it’s Martin.” The men, with Martin in the lead, crept closer to the front passenger door.

“Babe? Carol?” Martin looked back at the others. Henry kept the light on the door, reassuring him to proceed. The two officers straightened their arms, index fingers resting close to their triggers. The noise from inside grew louder with each approaching step. And by the time Martin was within reach of the handle, the noises sounded muffled, incoherent, but not unnatural. He put his hand around it and put his thumb on the handle’s button, looking back at the others before unveiling the surprise.

When the door opened, Carol was slumped forward in the driver’s seat, sobbing and muttering to herself.

“Carol.”

She didn’t reply. Martin called once more.

“Caro—.”

He leaned in, his head, nearly breaching the threshold of the driver’s side door frame. He put his hand down on the seat a few feet beside his wife’s left knee. The sounds from her continued. But this time, as Martin drew closer, she sounded as though she was sobbing between fits of suffocation. To Martin she almost appeared to be having an asthma attack. But she wasn’t asthmatic. When Martin leaned into where Carol was positioned, he felt something wet drip on his hand.

Martin took his flashlight and shined it on his hand, revealing a dark red substance. He looked at it curiously. Martin then shined the light further towards where his wife was sitting; down on the driver’s seat. There was an off-red splattering that seemed to collect in haphazard drops. They formed a trail and he followed it. Martin then knew what it was. Blood. His heart began pounding so loud he feared that he would send the rest of the hill down on them. And then he got to the car seat. His mouth hung open and his hands quivered. The light in his hand shook and couldn’t keep focus. Jameson’s car seat sat in the back empty, soaked in blood.

“Ca-Ca-Carol,” Martin muttered. “Wh-where’s Ja-Jameson?”

Her muttering continued.

“I am not an animal”

“Carol,” Martin asked. “What did you say?”

A thick, sucking sound could be heard from behind the matted, gnarled, knotted hair that hid Carol’s face. She started swaying a bit from side to side. Her jaw was moving peculiarly and then, when her hair cleared enough for Martin to make out the source of the noise, he realized that she wasn’t having breathing problems, she was chewing. Blood caked her face. As she opened and closed her mouth small bits of flesh could be seen stuck between her teeth,

spotting her cracked and bleeding lips. Carol looked down and Martin

followed with the light to where her attention had shifted. There was something in her arms, something bundled in what looked to Martin like a sweater. Carol jerked and one of its corners fell open. Martin put his hand to his face.

“Oh, god. Carol. Oh, fuck…”

From the grotesque tangle of red and white, tiny bones jetted upwards from the center, resembling a marrow cage stretched open. And between that and the bundle of Carol’s sweater hung a loosened arm, its five, pudgy fingers curled inward, gently gripping a folded line of fabric.

END