Already I feel a rush of energy from the food. I can sense the same in Biyu and Fiddler. Their eyes light up from the flurry of calories. We pass the bandana back and forth, lean against the boulders and ride the buzz.
Maybe we’ll get out of this alive after all.
And that’s when the Wendigo charges into camp.
XXIV.
What the hell is that thing?
The stench of the Wendigo announces its arrival before I see it. Its tall but fast moving frame shovels atmosphere ahead of it. It walks on two legs, but that’s all I can make out before a filthy paw tips me over with a slap to the side of the head. I catch a glimpse of Fiddler’s gaping mouth spilling food down his chest as I go down.
Biyu says something, but I can’t make it out. My ears ring as my head tests the give of the dirt. The Wendigo makes what I think is a gurgling noise. Or maybe that’s Fiddler. From the ground, I see his feet struggling in place.
I feel for the ESEE knife before scrambling to my feet, but in my daze I can’t find it. I reach for the first thing I can find instead: my gig. Now I wish I hadn’t split the spear into four points. That’s great for spearing rodents and snakes, but not mythical creatures.
With the gig in hand, I stand to face the back of the Wendigo. The skin looks like a fuzzy peach dragged across every jagged edge of every rock in The Pit. Ditches of battered skin and matted hair run between taut bones ready to burst through its hide. I can’t see its head because it’s hunched over Fiddler, but I’m expecting horns and red eyes.
“H-h-help,” Fiddler says as the Wendigo picks him up by the neck.
I aim the gig and take a step forward to plunge it into the Wendigo’s back, but in a blur the creature turns and tosses Fiddler into me. We crash onto the ground, Fiddler landing on top of me.
I roll Fiddler away as Biyu shouts something in Mandarin. My eyes watch her hoist her gig in the air. I still can’t see the Wendigo in full yet, but I spot its hand rise something shiny above Biyu’s head.
It’s got the knife.
I can’t get to Biyu in time. In a single, unceremonious motion, the Wendigo brings the knife down on her.
This can’t be happening.
Back on my feet, I find the gig again and make a second go at the Wendigo’s back, but something stops me in my tracks.
The Wendigo unleashes an agonizing scream that rattles my teeth until it’s suddenly cut short. It all happens so fast, I barely have time to glimpse the creature sprinting out of the camp. I do notice, however, an obscene streak of bright red blood that traces its path.
My eyes follow the blood back to the tips of Biyu’s gig. A bloody mass the size of a fist dangles within its four points.
“You OK?” I say to her after catching my breath.
“It missed with the knife,” Biyu says. She stares at the end of the gig. “I stabbed it in the throat and gave it a twist.”
Holy shit.
“What the hell was that thing?” I say. “Did you get a good look?”
“No. It…it…it wasn’t human. But it was, too. Like what you’d call a…I forget the word,” Biyu says.
“Bigfoot,” I say. “Yeti. Sasquatch. Skunk ape. Same thing.”
“Yes, but it didn’t seem too hairy to me. Not like an ape at all. Something else,” Biyu says.
I turn to Fiddler. No surprise, he’s still curled up on the ground.
“You OK?” I say to him.
He doesn’t respond. I hear crying from inside his fetal position.
“Hey,” I say and crouch down to lay a calming hand on his shoulder. “It’s gone.”
Fiddler sobs as he unfolds. Now I see why he’s so upset. He’s bleeding like a sieve from his side.
With tears in his eyes, he looks at me and says, “I told you I was going to die out here.”
For the first time, I believe him.
15.
I only need to look at the end of my own gig to figure out what happened. It wrecks my guts to know it. This time I’m the one trying to hold down vomit.
A couple points from my gig caught Fiddler as the Wendigo threw him onto me. I didn’t notice it in all the chaos, but the points stabbed straight through into Fiddler’s liver.
There’s nothing I can do now but try to comfort him. He’ll lose consciousness in a matter of minutes. A few more beyond that and he’ll be a goner.
His eyes never leave mine as I run a hand over his head.
“It’ll be OK,” I say over and over.
“No, it won’t,” Fiddler says. “I’m dying.”
“It’s not like that at all,” I say and glance back at Biyu. She covers her face in her hands. “I’ll get you out of this mess, too.”
“I told you. I told you,” Fiddler says. His face turns even paler as his hands slip and struggle for a grip against his wound.
“I can cauterize the injury, just like I did with Biyu. Remember how well that worked? It’ll be the same for you,” I say.
I suck at lying, as my daughter would point out were she here, and I tend to sound condescending when I do it. Fiddler can sense it, too. No amount of cauterizing is going to save him now. He’s lost too blood much already.
“I told you,” Fiddler says. “I…told…y…ou.”
I cradle Fiddler’s head as his sobs drift away with his life. They’re replaced by my own. I can’t help it. I pulled the trigger on plenty of people who deserved it, and it never bothered me before. But for as much as a pain in the ass Fiddler was while he was alive, he was on my side. Up against these odds, the tears are as much for my hopeless situation as they are for him.
I hear Biyu start to cry, too. No sense in holding it in for Fiddler’s sake anymore. I look back at her, remembering how she refused to tell us what we’re after or why we’re here.
No more secrets, not if this is the price.
I take my shirt off and drape it over Fiddler’s face. I’ll go bare-chested if it means giving him some measure of humanity in this hellhole they call The Pit.
The gig painted with Fiddler’s blood lands in the coals as I grab our deceased guide’s instead. I wipe my eyes clear and start down the trail of gore leading away from camp.
“Where are you going?” Biyu says.
“To get my knife back,” I say. “Then we’re having a conversation.”
16.
“Holy shit. Did you seen what I seen?” Orange Face says from behind the riflescope and any sense of grammar. He’s on his belly at the rim of The Pit with Long Beard and Silent Man.
“Oh, yes, I did,” Long Beard says. “That Wendigo bought it, but so did that chink’s race traitor boyfriend.”
“One of her boyfriends. What a whore,” Orange Face says and smiles to himself. “I wouldn’t mind heading down there and showing her how a real man feels between the legs.”
“That kind of talk is totally uncalled for, boy,” Long Beard says. “No race mixing. Not on my watch.”
“Probably catch a disease anyway,” Orange Face says.
“We’ve got bigger problems than where to stick your dick,” Long Beard says. “The Wendigo is out of the way, but there are still two left down there.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we should just finish them off instead of waiting around for a decent shot,” Long Beard says. He leverages himself to his feet using the butt of his rifle. “Come on. Time to roll out my new idea.”
The three make the short walk back to camp. Long Beard removes the camo netting from one of the ATVs and digs inside a canvas bag.
“This ought to be long enough to reach bottom,” Long Beard says and holds out a coil of rope. “We’ll hitch this to the ATV and park at the top of that gravel chute. I’ll toss down the rope and one of you will go down and get in position to ambush those two at night. Me and the other one will stay up top with the night vision gear and cover you. When you need to come back up, grab the rope and we’ll pull you with the ATV. Now which one of you wants to volunteer?”
Orange Face grins. “Did you even need to ask?” he says.
“That’s my boy,” Long Beard says. “You got that .45? You’ll need it in case you can get close up.”
“Always,” Orange Face says and pats the holster on his hip.
“Good. Now grab some extra mags and let’s get going,” Long Beard says.
17.
The path to the Wendigo is easy to follow. In The Pit, anything that doesn’t resemble the grayish beige of the rocks sticks out like a road flare. The bright red of the creature’s blood paints a map past the monoliths and back to the corpse we came across earlier.
I can see the beast splayed out on the ground several yards ahead of me in a clearing. It doesn’t look like it’s moving, but even so I firm up my grip on the gig.
I hope that thing still has my knife, or it owes me some money.
Even at a distance, the Wendigo looks huge. My feet move heel-toe, heel-toe in the dirt, and I stalk the creature from between boulders as if it were prey. But something strange happens the closer I get to it. The creature starts to look more and more human. The head. The hands. The way the body lays. In fact, by the time I’m close enough to count the fingers and toes, I’m convinced it’s not a mythical monster at all.
This is a person.
Squatting down within a shadow several yards away, I study the body, watching for any sign of movement. I’m not expecting any, but I can’t be too careful. After waiting a few minutes, I pick up a small rock and hurl it at the body. No movement. I toss another one to be sure. Still dead.
Despite the revelation, I’m hesitant to move into the clearing. Those psychos with the rifles are still out there, and I’d be completely exposed. But I’m not sure Biyu and I will make it out alive without that knife. It’s worth the risk. I’ll need to move fast.
Still crouching down, I hustle it out to the body. Sure enough, there’s the knife, no worse for wear. I stuff it into its sheath at my hip and take a look at the body.
It’s clear to me now why they say a Wendigo guards The Pit. The legends don’t mean a literal monster. They mean the monster people turn into once they’re down here, going mad and losing their humanity along their way to a slow death.
Along the path of my own pink slip here in The Pit, my mind pictured a monster charging into camp, trying to take my water and food. We both reverted to the tunnel vision that only life-or-death situations like this can bring about. And in that moment, we missed a chance to salvage what’s left of ourselves down here. Instead of offering him the water and food he so desperately needed, our first reaction was to kill him, just as he sought to kill us with his last morsel of energy for the chance at a swallow of water or a bite of food.
No doubt the smell of the cooked snake lured him in, and his body couldn’t see fit to do anything but come and take it. Neither of us is to blame. It’s this place. It’s The Pit.
I’m reminded again of Desert Storm and “the thirst” in that bunker. In a different scenario, those Iraqis were probably decent people. But when the water ran out, they became primal echoes of humans, Wendigos, too.
I pity the poor man on the ground in front of me. He probably came down into The Pit with whomever this other corpse between the boulders belonged to at one time. One of them transformed, so to speak, into a Wendigo and used the other to survive. It’s unlikely it’s the first time such a thing happened down here.
The Pit’s history is more than I care to think about now. There’s work to do, and I’m not looking forward to it.
The “Wendigo” is naked except for a pair of what I assume used to be hiking shorts. I slip a hand inside the pockets in search of anything useful.
Were I a praying man, I’d offer some sort of explanation to his spirit, but I’ve seen too much to know so little. One of my recent adventures to Nepal to do battle with a reincarnated deity named Kali set me straight on the path of god-fearing atheism. Lowercase g. If God, capital G, is out there, I’d like some answers about that Kali business before we even start to talk about picking the pocket of a dead man in The Pit.
The pockets turn up empty except for a collapsible spotting scope with the word Yukon printed on the side. It’s an incredible score given the psychos with the rifles still loom above us. I glass the rim with my lucky find, searching for any sign of them. The scope is in great condition, and it’s easy to trace the path we took down the gravel chute into this hellhole. From within the heat mirage, the chute looks more like a rocky water slide. Everything seems mundane until something catches my eye at the rim.
Panning over and zooming in, I watch for it again. A series of quick flashes reflect sunlight back at me from the edge of the rim. They’re coming from a riflescope.
And if the riflescope can give away its position in the sun, so can the spotting scope in my hands.
You couldn’t resist, could you, Chase? You just had to play with your new toy out in the open for everyone to see. And now they do.
I keep low and book it as fast as I can to the cover of a nearby boulder, anticipating a shot. It comes too late and too low, drilling a hole into the chest of the “Wendigo” instead. I crouch inside the shadow the boulder makes, tuck the spotting scope away and hope the shooter lost me in the shade.
A few minutes pass without incident. I decide it’s safe enough to raise the spotting scope to my eye. The shade should keep the lens from throwing a glare.
I scan for a sign of the shooter, but he’s since moved on. In his place is the rumble of a gasoline engine cruising along the rim.
I watch as an ATV pulls up to the top of the gravel chute. Two men hop off and tie a long rope to the back of the ATV. They toss the rope down the chute, then exchange slaps on the back. The one with an orange face and a bloody eye – I recognize him from before – starts scaling down the chute, his rifle slung over his shoulder.
He’s coming down after us, and they’ll pull him up with the ATV once he’s finished. What in the hell is so important down here that they’re trying so hard to kill us?
I slink back into the shadows and pick my way back to camp. Time to have that conversation with Biyu.
18.
“The knife. Thank goodness,” Biyu says after I return. She’s perched against her usual boulder. “Did you find that thing that attacked us?”
I skip the pleasantries.
“I did. You killed a person, not a monster. Someone who needed help,” I say. “But I have a feeling you didn’t mind. You’re a lot more than a journalist.”
“What are you talking about? Are you losing you mind?”
“Actually, I feel pretty good, all things considered,” I say and take a seat across from her next to Fiddler’s remains. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Biyu. You’re here for something big, and I want to know what it is you’re after.”
Biyu brushes off my hostility. “All in good time. I know of the spot where you can start digging. It’s not far from here,” she says.
“We’re not going anywhere. Those psycho shooters sent one of their guys down into The Pit. I’m guessing it wasn’t to make us lunch,” I say.
“They did? Chase, what are we going to do?”
“Not a damn thing until you tell me what’s going on. Your other option is to let those freaks with the guns come in here and ask the questions. Your choice,” I say and fold my arms.
“I didn’t hire you to ask questions.”
“You also didn’t hire me to do my best MacGyver impression, but here I am playing with snakes and potato chips. I don’t buy your story about being a journalist on a cultural expedition from China one bit. What woman hires two strange men to bring her into the middle of the woods like this? What human being, for that matter, cores out someone’s throat but can only think about finding some mysterious thing in this shit hole? You know something I don’t,” I say.
In the back of my mind, I know Biyu is right about needing to move quickly to counter the attack Orange Face is planning right now. But I also can’t imagine he�
�d do it in broad daylight. With his fresh supplies and guns, he figures he’s at the advantage no matter the time of day. He’ll wait until nighttime, when he assumes we’re at our most disadvantaged, to make his move. That leaves us with more than enough time to sort through this bullshit about why we’re here, despite Biyu’s objections to the contrary.
Biyu sighs. “You Americans and your conspiracy theories. If you could get over your paranoia, the rest of the world wouldn’t seem so dangerous and ripe for your meddling,” she says.
“This isn’t a conspiracy theory, and I’m not the paranoid one in this conversation. You hired me for protection, and I bet it wasn’t to hose you down with bug spray,” I say and try not to grit my teeth.
Biyu looks up at the sky. “I suppose I should tell him,” she says to the sun.
Now she’s the one losing it.
“You talking to God?” I say.
“No. I’m talking to the satellite in the sky watching us right now,” Biyu says.
19.
“You see ‘em?” Orange Face says into the radio clipped to the lapel of his surplus military jacket. It’s hot, but the jacket makes for great camouflage against the parched landscape of the rocks. This one came from Desert Storm.
“They’re still in their camp. Our rifles will let them know if they wander too far from it. Over,” Long Beard says in reply, mimicking his time in the military. He’s the only actual veteran of the three, his boys being too fucked up to fill out the paperwork.
“Good. Keep them there. I’m almost into position,” Orange Face says as he mimics his time serving in the Call of Duty video games. His jittery frame ducks in and out of cover that doesn’t exist.
“Wait for my signal after night falls. We need to spot them with the infrared scopes before you make the move or we can’t give you covering fire. That will keep them confused while you go in for the kill. Over,” Long Beard says.
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