Nighthawk

by Alan Monroe

  Quiet regained a foothold in the clearing between thunderclaps. Davis stepped forward slowly while signaling Hugh and Clint to approach form the sides. The tall grass hid the body from view with only a break in the surface to show its location. All three men reached the body at the same time, and their eyes focused on the fist sized hole in its chest. Lifeless eyes stared into the storm clouds above.

  A full minute passed before Davis spoke. “I’ve got to say, I was expecting something bigger.”

  Mangy hair covered the five foot long body that looked like it had not received a decent meal in years, and a thin layer of muscle lay underneath dark black skin that stretched tight across its body revealing every bone and joint in stark detail. Long but mostly broken claws tipped the two large hands. A face covered with weeping lesions encircled a mouth filled with rotten blood stained teeth. Knotty tumors covered the body from head to toe, and its legs actually appeared to be different lengths.

  “Couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds,” Davis said.

  Hugh placed the barrel of his shotgun under the creature’s shoulder and partly rolled it over. “The exit wound is bigger than a basketball. Talk about overkill.”

  Davis looked at Hugh. “It sounded a lot bigger in the trees.”

  Hugh shrugged. “True.”

  Clint slowly stood and looked at Davis. “Sheriff, this is not the same Sasquatch.”

  Davis opened the breach and loaded another brass cartridge. “You are going to have to explain this to me Clint.”

  Clint pointed at the feet. “Just look at the feet. This guy has feet that are way too small to leave the footprints we've been seeing. Not to mention the tracks we’ve seen indicate a creature of at least seven hundred or so pounds. Jr. here, is lucky if he weighs one hundred even.”

  “You make a good point. No way he could have carried off anybody from Tom’s expedition. This thing looks like it was doing good to carry itself around much less anybody else.”

  “So does that mean you killed a baby, sheriff?” Hugh asked.

  The sheriff got down on one knee and peered into the lifeless eyes and saw the same pain he encountered all too often in abuse and rape victims.

  “Not funny. I thought I had a bad sense of humor.”

  "Little or not," Hugh said. "He was moving awfully well when he was circling us a minute ago."

  Clint was the first to touch the still warm leathery skin of the hideous young creature. “I think we need to worry about how many more of the things are around.”

  “Just one right? The big one?” Jared asked.

  Davis shook his head. “There could be just one. But there could be mother, father, brothers, and sisters. Not to mention aunts and uncles.”

  Clint looked around the clearing. “I think you are carrying things a little too far, sheriff. There is no way this area could support more than a few of these things.”

  “Maybe that’s why he looks so sickly,” Jared said.

  “But that’s not how higher animals work," Clint said. "This thing is young, but that's not all. It’s malnourished and emaciated. The mother would share with the child, even give up her own food to give it to the child."

  The sheriff felt the sharp claws on its hands. “But the same can’t be said for all animal fathers. We already talked about how male bears will eat their own young. This thing’s mother could be dead.”

  Clint moved away from the body. “But they say these things are some kind of ape. And I don’t know anything about apes, but I thought they had families.”

  Hugh shook his head. “We're a long way from anywhere apes live, who knows what these things do.”

  Davis nodded. “I have to agree with Clint. Something about this entire area is definitely unnatural.”

  A rhythmic tapping sound popped out of the quiet forest, and rifles snapped up to shoulders while eyes search for any hint of fur in the dead looking brush around the clearing. A crooked smile spread across Davis’ face, and the rifle fell from his shoulder as he began to hum the University of Washington’s fight song keeping beat with the tapping.

  “Come on in Tom,” Davis said.

  “Coming in,” the voice said from the trees.

  Moments later a very haggard, but happy, Tom Roundtree stepped into the clearing. After several moments of stunned silence, Clint stepped forward and hugged his brother. After a long embrace, Tom stepped forward and shook each man’s hand starting with Davis.

  “Sheriff, I can’t believe that you came all the way up here so quickly.”

  Davis smiled. “You didn’t think we were going to let you get killed by a legend did you?”

  Tom stepped forward and looked at the dead Sasquatch. “I guess you're a believer now, sheriff.”

  “Oh, I believe alright. But I would be more interested in knowing how many more of these ugly things are running around up here.”

  “At least two or three," Tom said. "I haven’t actually seen this one, but the big one's at least twice the size of Hugh.”

  Hugh stepped forward. “That would be the one that snatched a few members of your group.”

  Tom forwned and nodded his head. “Yeah, it took two of my friends, and it chased us all the way up here.”

  Davis put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Where is everybody else Tom?”

  Tom pointed north. “They’re in a cave about a half mile in that direction. I heard that thing screaming and thought he was just harassing us again. Then I heard that howitzer sound off and decided I would come looking for whoever else was dumb enough to be out here.”

  Jared had begun kneeling by the dead Sasquatch as soon as he finished shaking Tom’s hand. He had even put on a pair of latex gloves and began to examine the dead creature. The young paramedic looked in the Sasquatch's mouth and felt of several tumors that covered its body.

  "Sheriff, take a closer look at this thing," Jared said. Davis knelt down his friend. “This thing is not just ugly. It's severely deformed. It might even be extremely retarded.”

  Davis looked puzzled. “What are you saying, Jared?”

  “Sheriff, I may just be an EMT instead of a full fledged doctor. But I know severe retardation when I see it. And this Sasquatch is more deformed and retarded than anything I have ever seen.”

  “What could cause that?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Like I said; I’m not a doctor. It could account for some of the behavior though.”

  Hugh interrupted the conversation at his first opportunity. “Sheriff, don’t you think we should carry on this conversation someplace safer than right next to the Sasquatch that we just killed?”

  Clint smiled for the first time in several days. “You mean that the sheriff just killed.”

  “You really think that its mom or dad will know which one of us killed it?” Davis said.

  Clint laughed. “Just kidding, sheriff. From the looks of this scrawny thing, no one cared whether he ate or not.”

  Tom pulled a small digital camera from his backpack and began taking several pictures of the dead Sasquatch. Hugh looked at him and said, “Don’t you think the time for scientific curiosity has passed?”

  "I'm hoping that Dr. Smith can explain the deformity. And even if he can’t, it would be a shame to go through this nightmare and not have anything to show for it.”

  Tom took closeups from every conceivable angle as well as several full body shots. He spread the lips apart in order to photograph the few teeth that remained in its head, but he paid special attention to the lesions on its face and the rumors that covered its body.

  "You want me to stand that thing up and pose with it," Davis asked.

  Hugh propped the shotgun on his shoulder. "I could get behind it and wave its arms so you could get some live action shots."

  "No," Tom replied. "We could get killed out here messing around like that; you better follow me to the cave before you have any more crazy ideas."

  Davis frowned and shook his head.

  Wednesday, May 15 1:45
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  “It’s too hot to be coming out here to feed you pigs,” Ms. Feyhee rasped.

  Sweat poured down her thin frame even though the temperature hovered at sixty-eight degrees. The thirty gallon galvoniized metal bucket dug a shallow tench in the dirt two feet wide while she drug it across the yard; grease, chicken guts, left over food, trash, and even a dead cat sloshed back and forth in the bucket and onto her hands. Ms. Feyhee stopped and straightened out her back; a withered forearm wiped sweat from her brow. She noticed a few drops of slop on her right hand, and she quickly licked them off with a long swipe of her tongue.

  Luther always kept pigs before the war; he considered them the finest of animals. His wife carried on the tradition in the over sixty years since Luther died. The pigs themselves carried the wrinkles of many years, and Ms. Feyhee never dreamt of slaughtering them for what would be very tough meet by now. They ranked second in life behind her lovely cats. She fed them twice every day, and the massive things kept growing larger and larger. They weighed between five and eight hundred pounds not including another twenty or thirty pounds of mud clinging to the ridges running along the length of their bodies.

  The pigs began to snort when they saw their approaching meal; the animals fought for space along the split rail fence driving their snouts under the lowest rail. Ms. Feyhee stepped to the right of the bucket while holding onto the long handle, and it finally tipped over spilling the slop into the mud in front of the fence. She kicked the thick slop from the top of her bare feet, and the snorting grew in volume when the largest pigs pushed their way closer to the food.

  After she turned to take back to take the bucket to the house, she saw the huge footprint. “Stupid Bigfoot comin round here lookin at me.”

  She continued to drag the big empty metal buck back towards the rickety shack until she reached the back stoop where she left it outside. She disappeared inside for several moments; when she reappeared after several moments, a large steel bear trap followed behind her attached to the chain in her hand.

  “I’ll teach him to come around here eyen me.”

  One of her cats rubbed up against her ankle and she quickly kicked it away without a second thought. Unlike the animal traps featured in children’s cartoons’ over the years, the large metal mouth of this trap did not have teeth. The smooth steel dug through fur and flesh locking the bone in its steel grip. The trap closed with enough force to break skin rather than cut it; in fact, it often closed hard enough to break the leg of its victim.

  Ms. Feyhee drug the trap to the far side of the hog pen near the outhouse. The pigs grew excited with the hope of another meal so soon. As she walked by the pen, their snorting echoed across the clearing.

  “Shut up you stupid pigs. I done fed you today.”

  She walked behind the outhouse and chained the trap to a wooden fencepost that had been placed in concrete at least thirty years ago. Traps were often chained to trees or fences in order to keep the prey from dragging itself and the trap away to die. It took her several minutes to pry the heavy jaws apart into the locked position, but she finally heard a satisfying click as they locked into place.

  She snickered when she covered the trap with straw to mask it from view. “I’ll teach you to come sneakin around my place at night.”

  Wednesday, May 15 2:00 p.m.

  Tom led the small search party through the scrub into a semicircular field barren of all plant life and littered with small boulders. The straight side of the semicircle paralleled the rock face leading to the peak of Little Chopaka Mountain. The longer Davis looked at the clearing the more obvious it became that the rocks formed a make shift wall between the clearing and the mangy forest. A second row of rocks lined the mouth of the of the ten foot wide cave opening in the side of the mountain.

  Initially, the cave stretched straight back into the mountain for forty feet where it abruptly turned ninety degrees to the left creating a chamber completely invisible from the outside of the cave. One man lie on the ground in the rear chamber with his head propped on a backpack; a young lady kneeled down next to him mopping his sweat covered forehead with what looked like a piece of cloth torn from a shirt. Dirt filled the creases in her face formed by a large frown; she did not even look up when Davis and the rescue party entered the cave.

  “We were within ten minutes of finding them when that thing charged out of the woods,” Hugh said.

  Davis looked at Tom and whispered. “Only two left besides you?”

  Tom nodded while he knelt down next to his two companions. “Sheriff, I would like you to meet Dr. Travis Smith and Rachael Patrice.”

  Dr. Smith extended a shaky hand to Davis, but the man still held a formal edge in his voice. “Sheriff, I am pleased and grateful to make you acquaintance. I am sorry it is not under better circumstances.”

  Davis shook the man’s hand and noticed the older man still had life in his eyes. “Doctor, I’m glad to find you and the rest of your party alive. But I’ve got to ask. We have unfortunately accounted for two members of your party. There are three of you here. That adds up to five. Where is number six?”

  Smith turned his head towards the rock wall. “Perhaps Tom should tell you.”

  Davis faced Tom. “Well?”

  “Our guide, Luke Wallace, ran out on us last night sometime before Dr. Rhoades was abducted. I’m assuming by the way you said ‘accounted for’ that means she and Simeon are dead. Wallace took the only rifle we had.” Tom’s voice carried a slight quiver. “Took most of what little gear we had with us after fleeing the camp. All I had was my nine millimeter, and that thing didn’t even notice it was being shot. If Wallace had not taken the gun, Dr. Rhoades might still be alive. He ran like a scared rabbit when that thing chased us the first night. We all ran, but he wouldn’t stop to help a soul or carry the Doc.”

  Davis put his hands on his young friends shoulder. “Don’t worry, what goes around comes around. He’ll get what he deserves sooner or later.” The Sherriff turned to Jared, “Why don’t you check out the Doc’s leg; Tom and I will go outside to talk.”

  Jared immediately opened up his medical kit and began examining Dr. Smith. Davis and Roundtree walked outside into the wind while Hugh and Clint moved to join them. Davis looked Tom directly in the eye. “You’ve done a great job keeping these people together and alive. Nobody could have done better. But I know you well enough to know that you’re filled with guilt about this whole trip. You’re smart enough to know none of this is your fault, but right now you feel like a victim. You’ve got to stop acting and feeling like a victim, and you have got to act like a cop if we’re all going to get out of this. Act like a man.”

  Tom stopped looking at the sheriff and glanced down at the ground, and small drops of water slipped from the corner of his eyes.

  Hugh said, “Man’s right, Tom. You’ve been through a bad time up here. But you’ve got to get past it now if we are going to get out of this. It’s one thing to have those folks in the cave scared, but we’re counting on you.”

  When Roundtree looked up at the sheriff and Hugh, the tears had dried. “What do you need from me, Sheriff?”

  The sheriff looked at Roundtree and nodded. “I need to know exactly what happened up here. Don’t spare me any details.”

  Roundtree let out a deep breath. “It took us seven days to hike from Nighthawk to our one and only campsite in the old growth forest we had jokingly been calling Ape City. We didn’t see anything unusual during those first seven days; the forest was completely normal. We saw the typical animals that you see when you’re in the forest; we even had a run in with a big grizzly bear. And we saw absolutely no sign of Bigfoot. After entering the old growth forest late on Sunday afternoon, it was like the difference between night and day. The newer forest was full of life and animals; the old growth forest seemed stagnant. After hiking just a few miles into the forest we were unable to see any signs of animal life. We set up camp at dusk and began to plan a search area for the next day.”

 
“I woke up sometime after midnight. The camp was filled with the worst smell I’ve ever encountered; it stank like rotten meat. I knew it had to be a Sasquatch, or about fifty skunks all spraying the whole camp. I was sharing a tent with Dr. Smith, but before I could wake him up, I heard an unholy shriek coming from just outside our camp. Then something started throwing rocks at all of the tents. There had to be at least three or four of them; I could hear several distinct voices or roars. Our whole camp was awake and screaming at once. Then a huge thing came tearing through our camp. I’ve never seen anything so big. It was throwing backpacks and equipment, and ripping up everything in sight. All this time, the others were still throwing rocks at us. Rachael saw my phone and tried to use it. The doc got smacked in the thigh with a big rock, and he hit the ground grabbing his leg. While I was trying to help the doc, Wallace got grazed in the side of the head.”

  “More of those things started charging the camp. Sheriff, the ground was shaking. I had Rachael help me with the Doc, and we started running out of the camp. We couldn’t run downhill because that’s where the Sasquatch were coming from. We ran all night and all the next day. Rachael dropped my sat phone sometime during the night. The entire time, the biggest one was following us and screaming. Wallace was supposed to be in the back with the rifle, but he was all the way in front like he was trying to get away from us instead of the Bigfoot. That thing suddenly came out of nowhere and grabbed Simeon; he never even had a chance. The Sasquatch didn’t even break stride; picked him up like a rag doll. We heard Simeon screaming for a full five minutes. Then his screaming suddenly stopped followed by a loud crack; I couldn’t believe how loud the pop was. We knew he was dead. Then the Sasquatch started screaming and howling even louder. It sounded like a little kid having a temper tantrum.”

  “An hour our so later we tried to change direction and head back downhill. It cut us off, and forced us into moving toward the rock face. We weaved all over that hillside due to the terrain. But it just walked wherever it wanted to like the brush and trees weren’t even there. Once we reached the rock face and started running alongside it, the Sasquatch was content with keeping us from moving away from the rock face. We stumbled along this cave sometime Tuesday.” Roundtree finally smiled for the first time since he began his story. “That thing got mad when we went in the cave. We were able to get around the bend inside the cave, and it couldn’t throw rocks at us. We could hold it off with Wallace’s rile and my pistol if it ever entered the mouth of the cave. It had been thirty-six hours since any of us had slept. I took the first shift at guard. Wallace took over after dark. Dr. Rhoades woke me up about ten o’clock to tell me that Wallace had left with the rifle.”