“Oh, you two be careful!” cried Mrs. Gonzalez, who was still next to her husband.
Danny flicked the pistol’s safety switch on, pushed the gun into his shorts pocket, and ran over to his son. “Alec! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he pleaded, holding him close.
Alec shook his head, swallowing air in gulps. “No, no, Dad, I’m okay, I’m okay.”
Mrs. Gonzalez got up and hurried to the kitchen and returned with a glass of cold water for Alec, who drank it thankfully. Then she poured some of it on a hand towel and dabbed his forehead. Sarah and Ethan came bounding back downstairs.
“That Bigfoot tore yer shirt!” Ken gasped, inspecting Alec’s back.
“Good thing it didn’t get ahold of your back with those dirty, stinky nails!” screeched Ethan, who was now traveling in a permanent cloud of stench, like Pig Pen. He was hopping around and tooting in an excited mania.
The front wall shook. The rocks were coming again.
“Can you get up?” Danny asked Alec, who nodded and stood. They walked over to the living room furniture and Alec eased down onto a loveseat. Mr. and Mrs. Edgar assisted Mr. Gonzalez to the couch, where he laid back flat, still dazed. Sarah helped Emily stand up and led her to the living room.
Another window shattered and the shutter on the right side of the living room was struck hard, but it held, remaining closed and locked.
“Do you have another gun, Danny?” Mrs. Edgar asked.
Danny shook his head. “John’s got a license and carries his pistol with him on our trips, but I don’t keep one. Do you or Elbert?”
Mrs. Edgar bitterly shook her head no. “This is crazy. We’re all just analysts and investigators. Who is supposed to deal with situations like this? Have you had a situation like this before, where you’re under attack?”
“No, not like this. We’re usually prepared for whatever we’re dealing with, but I have to say that this has caught us by surprise. These Sasquatches are more aggressive than we anticipated. The alpha team are the enforcers. They sometimes come in after our investigations are complete, whenever they’re needed—”
“I think we need to call them, Danny!”
Danny looked at her carefully. “The alpha team doesn’t play around. If they find these creatures attacking the cabin, they’ll kill them.”
Mrs. Edgar nodded and sighed. “I know, I know, and I understand that we’re not pro-kill, but—”
Outside, a creature began what sounded like whacking two rocks together and grunting loudly. Something slammed against the wall in the kitchen, loud and thunderous. On the loveseat, Emily sucked in her breath and shot her eyes around in a near-panic. Danny and Mrs. Edgar watched her, then glanced back at each other.
“It might be them or us,” Mrs. Edgar whispered heavily.
Danny thought for a moment. He sighed. “Okay. You’re right. But they’re in Kansas City and it’ll take a while for them to get around and get here.”
“I know. I’m going to go ahead and call them on our satphone.” She walked into one of the back rooms and closed the door.
Sarah, on one loveseat next to Emily, looked over at Alec who was on the loveseat opposite, across the room. “You okay?”
Alec was shell-shocked. He gazed at the two girls. His eyes were still like saucers, and his wavy blonde hair stood out everywhere. “Yeah,” he breathed.
Everyone sat stiff and tense, listening to the stones hit the walls, doors, and roof. Every once in a while, a window shattered and something clunked against the closed shutters.
Mrs. Edgar emerged from the back room and nodded at Danny, confirming a successful phone call. Danny nodded back.
The minutes dragged by, as the monsters outside continued their assault. The entire cabin continually shook under the stress of the ongoing attacks, and the nerves of the people hiding inside frayed.
Ethan began to sniffle. Tears streaked down his plump cheeks. Alec, who was next to him on the loveseat, peered at him. Ethan’s hair was messed up and his over-sized collar was half standing up. Alec put his arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
Mrs. Edgar, sitting in a wooden rocking chair, watched Alec’s kind move gratefully. “How many of those things did you see through the window out there, Alec?” she asked.
“Six.”
“Six! Hoo-mama!” said Mr. Edgar, who sat in a recliner, shaking his head.
Danny, in the other recliner, focused on his son. “Are you sure?”
Alec nodded.
Mrs. Edgar looked at Danny. “Isn’t that a lot for this area? Could the land support them?”
“That lake out there is full of trout — it’s one of the top lakes for trout fishing anywhere around,” Danny replied. “And there are countless deer and rabbits and squirrels and turkeys and even feral hogs in this area. Plus Bigfoots are omnivores, so they can also eat wild strawberries, wild onions, roots, grasses, plants, whatever, in addition to meat. The reports we’ve seen suggest an average Bigfoot probably needs around 35 pounds of a mixed diet of meat and plants per day. This area could easily provide that for a small group like this.”
The window in the kitchen crashed and the wooden shutters rattled. Something had tried to force its way in. Almost in unison, something clunked on the roof above the living room; and the back wall of the cabin, in the room behind the living room, shook.
This was too much for Emily. She covered her ears with her hands, closed her eyes, and screamed, tears streaking down her face. Sarah grabbed her shoulders and shook them, trying to get her to calm down, but it didn’t work. Ken, seated across from the two girls, next to Alec and Ethan, covered his ears and stared at Emily in mute dismay. Mrs. Gonzalez rose from the edge of the couch, where she was seated next to her husband, to go to her, but Mrs. Edgar patted her knee and said, “It’s okay, I’ve got this,” as she got up and hurried to the screaming girl. She folded Emily into a big hug and held her tight, whispering and trying to comfort her, rocking back and forth.
Ethan’s sniffles turned to loud wails, mixing with Emily’s screams, sounding like the soundtrack of Hell. Mrs. Gonzalez rushed over to him and Alec got up, allowing her to sit down and hold Ethan.
Something pounded hard against the front door, and it quaked dangerously. Ken’s eyes grew wide. “They’re gonna get in! They’re gonna get in!” he shouted. Alec twirled around and stared in horror at the vibrating door.
Mr. Edgar jumped up and ran around the room yelling, “We need something to brace against the door!” Danny stood and glanced around, trying to spot something to use to push against the door.
The roof jolted and rumbled. Emily screamed louder, becoming frantic. Ethan’s wails increased in volume.
It’s a madhouse! Alec thought, gazing around the room with a knot in his stomach. We’re going to die!
Danny pulled the pistol from his pocket and clicked the safety off. Mr. Edgar emerged from the back room with a long piece of wrought iron. He saw Danny’s quizzical expression and said, “It’s part of the frame from the old antique bed back there.” Danny nodded.
Mr. Edgar pushed one end of the iron against the front door and kicked the other end into the wooden floor until the pole was shoved hard against the door. “That should help,” he announced with satisfaction.
The door convulsed against the pole as something slammed against it. Mr. Edgar shouted, “Whoa!” and jumped back. The beast on the other side of the door bellowed in anger.
In the midst of the chaos, Alec and Danny looked at each other. Alec saw his father’s face slowly morph from one of alarm to panic to concern. Then, as his dad stared at him, something unspoken passed between them. A determination that Alec had never seen before possessed Danny’s face. A determination that said, I will protect you at any cost. His dad pursed his lips and his eyes shone with a foreign intensity. They nodded at each other.
Mr. Edgar began to slink carefully toward one of the windows in the living room. “Elbert!” his wife shouted
over Emily’s screams.
“There’re cracks in these shutters where the seams are, Evie. I wanna try to see through them, see how many are still out there!” Thin and bent over and sneaking as he was, with his big nose and receding hairline, Alec thought he resembled a giant rat.
Mr. Edgar approached the locked shutters slowly, drawing his face up next to the white flaking paint on the wood. There was one long seam that ran from top to bottom, and he pressed his right eye up to it, peering outside.
“It’s all blackness. I can’t see a durn thing out there! Hmmm… say, I think I hear something.” He turned to the group behind him. “Guys, please, quiet down for a minute, would ya?”
It took a few minutes for Mrs. Edgar and Mrs. Gonzalez to get Emily and Ethan to calm down, but finally the screaming and crying were replaced by muffled sniffles.
“Thank you!” Mr. Edgar said. He turned back to the window shutters and placed his ear against the wood, listening intently. “I’m not sure… well, um, it’s low and steady.”
Alec stared at the man with increasing dread. “Mr. Edgar, I think you should back up…” he mumbled.
Mr. Edgar kept his head flat against the old shutter. After a moment, he said, “It’s breathing! Something’s out there is breathing, heavy and hoarse and deep. That’s pretty creepy.”
Alec saw Mr. Edgar swallow hard. The man put his right eye against the wooden seam and stared out. His body stiffened.
“Elbert! Get away from the window!” Mrs. Edgar said.
“Uh… these, um, animals…” He swallowed again. “Their eyeshine is red! I’ve got two red eyes in the darkness, on the other side of this shutter, staring at me!”
“Elbert!” Mrs. Edgar repeated.
“Aunt Jemima’s pancakes!” Mr. Edgar muttered in alarm.
The shutters exploded.
Mr. Edgar fell back in a cloud of wooden splinters and debris. A humongous, hairy head pushed its way through the destroyed window. The Bigfoot locked its eyes on Mr. Edgar and roared.
“ELBERT!” Mrs. Edgar screamed.
Every person in the cabin began to yell and shout in panic.
Mr. Edgar rolled over and scratched against the floor, his white dress shoes slipping on the wood, as he tried to scurry away from the creature. Ethan suddenly charged at the bushy head with his arms over his head, shrieking at the top of his lungs, “YOU GET AWAY FROM MY DAD!”
Mr. Edgar’s face filled with horror. “Ethan!”
The pudgy little fellow approached the roaring monster and kicked it in the face as hard as he could.
“Yeah!” Ken cheered. “Go, Ethan!”
The Bigfoot screeched in pain. Ethan kicked it again, right on the nose. It pulled its head back out from the window.
Ethan began to shake his hips and swing his arm in front of him, as if hitting a riff on a guitar. “That’s rubber neckin’, baby!” He started jumping around and kicking his legs out wildly.
Mr. Edgar ran to his son, scooped him up, and hurried back to the furniture where the others were. “Good grief, Ethan!” he coughed. Ken raised his hand and Ethan slapped it in a high five. Mrs. Edgar hugged her husband and son, crying.
A gray hand slid around the corner of the damaged window. Danny shot it. The sound reverberated and made Alec’s ears hurt. Something roared and the hand disappeared.
Danny sat down on the floor about ten feet away from the window, against the back of one of the loveseats, and shot at anything that moved on the outside. Mr. Gonzalez, wobbly and dizzy, stood and ambled to Danny. He sat down next to him gently. Danny glanced over at his friend.
“How you doing? Do you know who you are?” he smiled.
“I’m Batman!” Mr. Gonzalez grinned, raising one eyebrow.
Danny laughed, then pulled the trigger on the pistol again as something moved past the window.
“Whew! Those Sasquatches stink!” Mr. Gonzalez said.
“I think there’s a little Ethan mixed in as well,” Danny snickered. Then he became serious again. “You have more ammo?”
“Yeah, in the back room. Sarah!” Sarah stepped around the corner of the loveseat. “Sarah, could you please go grab my box of bullets out of my backpack. It has a red stripe across the top that says thirty-eight special.” Sarah nodded and sped off to the other room. When she returned with the ammunition, Danny reloaded the pistol.
The attacks on the cabin were beginning to slow down. Every few minutes a wall or door or window shutter shook, and any time one approached the open window Danny fired the gun, but it seemed the Bigfoots were losing their resolve.
After a while, Danny nudged the dozing Mr. Gonzalez on the shoulder and nodded toward the open window. A faint light was beginning to glow outside. Mr. Gonzalez looked at Danny and exhaled a relieved sigh. The sun was coming up.
Thirty minutes later, the attacks stopped completely. Danny stood and carefully approached the broken window. He stopped a couple of feet away from it, bent over and peered out. It was daylight, and the Bigfoots, reputed to be mostly nocturnal, were gone.
Alec lay on the living room floor next to the couch, sore and exhausted. He was surrounded by the little band of people who he now considered family, every one of them. They had gone through something together that most people could never even fathom, let alone actually experience. They had lived through a real, living, breathing, roaring nightmare. He felt a kinship even with the odd Edgar family. He glanced up at them, huddled on the couch next to him, Mr. Edgar’s arm around his wife on one side and another arm around Ethan on the other side, Ethan asleep with his head leaning against his dad’s chest. They were good people, he had decided, no matter how quirky they were. And Ethan was a spunky, funny kid.
His eyes moved to the loveseat that formed an L with the couch, where Sarah and Emily were sunk under a large fuzzy baby blue blanket. Emily’s head was laid on the back of the loveseat, the dirty streaks of dried tears on her cheeks, eyes closed, asleep.
Sarah was watching him. When he looked at her, she smiled. Alec smiled back.
Ken was on the floor a couple of feet to Alec’s right, asleep also. Alec didn’t blame him. They had been awake most of the night, fighting off the monsters. Why Alec was still awake, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he was just too scared to let his guard down.
Alec jumped when he heard the front door open. Sitting up, he watched his dad cautiously step out onto the front porch, gun in hand; Mr. Gonzalez, his head wrapped in the white bandage, close behind him. Sunlight shone through the door and the broken shutters on the front wall, twenty feet apart. There was another window in between, with the shutters still closed, where Alec had almost been dragged out to his death. The window with the broken shutters and sunlight was where Mr. Edgar had almost been eaten. Shattered glass littered the floor in front of both windows.
Mr. Edgar gently laid Ethan down on the couch and he and his wife stood and walked to the door. Alec got up and followed them.
Oblivious to anything but the joy of a new day, insects shot around the yard and buzzed Alec’s face. He waved them away, annoyed. A monarch butterfly sputtered around the white-flowered bushes that were in front of the porch. It was as if the previous night had just been a nightmare, and the freshness of the morning set everything aright. But Alec knew better.
As soon as he stepped out into the cool, damp early morning air, Alec could smell them. The Bigfoots. Their sickening, sour stench hung in the air like poison. He scowled. Gross.
There were large rocks everywhere, littered on the porch, in front of the door, all over the trampled yard and around the perimeter of the cabin. And the yard was full of gigantic footprints. The adults were already pacing around in the grass examining them.
Alec joined his dad, who was bent over several tracks. “Bigfooters count themselves lucky to come across one of these, and here we have an entire yard full,” his father muttered.
Alec examined some of the footprints. Varying size, all longer than twelve inches, some were two feet long. Very
wide across the top and a broad heel. Large big toe, with the toes all splayed apart. It looked like giant barefoot men had been tramping around the campground.
“I’ve got dermal ridges,” Mr. Gonzalez said, bent over the ground a few feet away. “And evidence for a mid-tarsal break.”
“Oh, that’s excellent,” said Mrs. Edgar, raising her head from her own separate inspection.
Alec glanced quizzically at his dad. “What does all that mean?”
Danny straightened up and put his hands on his sides, twisting his back to try to pop it. He looks as sore as I feel, Alec thought.
“Come ’ere,” his dad said, walking toward Mr. Gonzalez.
Alec and Danny bent over the tracks that Mr. Gonzalez was studying. “See these lines in the print? See how they run up and down the foot?” Danny asked. Alec nodded. “These are dermal ridges. They’re like a fingerprint, only on the foot.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, and what’s really interesting about these ridges is that the dermal ridges on a human’s foot go side to side, not up and down like these,” Mr. Gonzalez jumped in. “And an ape’s are slanted.”
Alec peered at the prints closely. Yep, the ridges ran up and down, for sure.
“Also, see how the toes in these prints around here are not all spread out in the same way or the same length apart? That’s another sign that the prints are genuine, and not faked, although in this case we definitely know that the prints aren’t faked,” Mr. Gonzalez continued.
Mr. Edgar, across the yard, laughed and snorted. “That’s fer sure!”
“And what’s that other thing you said? A tar-sole break?” said Alec.
Mr. Gonzalez nodded his headed enthusiastically. “A mid-tarsal break, yes! See that little ridge of mud that goes across the print from side to side, higher than the rest of the print? Okay. That is a pronounced pressure ridge, and it is evidence of the fact that Sasquatches have a flexible foot that can grasp things like apes. Humans don’t have that. Instead of a mid-tarsal break, modern humans have a mid-tarsal locking mechanism, which keeps the foot straight and solid. So a Sasquatch can lift up half of their foot, from the middle of the foot to the long heel, while keeping the front half of their foot on the ground. Humans can only lift most of their foot and keep their toes and the ball of their foot down, because the length of the human foot is stiff and fixed.”
Alec Kerley and the Terror of Bigfoot (Book One of the Monster Hunters Series) Page 8