Tritium Gambit

by Erik Hyrkas

  Chapter 31. Max

  Then an enormous bone-white hand knocked all three of us backward across the road. Miranda crumpled against a tree, and I redecorated a granite boulder with my body. John tumbled into his Camaro through the back window.

  The Wendigo roared and stomped toward me. I was still dazed by the impact of smashing into a huge rock.

  “Hey ugly,” John said as he crawled out of the car. “I’ve got a message from your dad.” The sheriff pulled the triggers on his Ultra Mags. “Time’s up.”

  The RPGs slammed into the Wendigo’s gut and exploded with terrible force. The creature tottered and gripped the crater that had once been its stomach, then toppled over as yellow-green goo oozed from between its clutched fingers and its face contorted in rage and agony.

  “Let’s go!” Miranda gasped, still regaining her breath. “He won’t stay down long.”

  I scrambled to my feet on the wet ground and grabbed the pen I had dropped. The three of us ran down the road like our lives depended on it.

  Miranda was faster than John and me. She would leap forward with blinding speed but kept waiting for us every few hundred yards.

  “Miranda, get to Silver Bay first to find a way to get the Wendigo into the water,” I suggested.

  She nodded. “Don’t get eaten first.”

  She bounded away in a blur, leaving John and me to run at our more human pace.

  “When he gets back up, he’ll be angry; and he will follow our scent,” John said. “I’ve only got two more shots left, and so we have to make them count. The rain will help confuse our scent, but it won’t stop him. I’m guessing we have thirty minutes at most before he catches back up to us.”

  “Yeah, you did some serious damage. The way he lost his stomach, he’s going to be hungry and angry,” I said. “I have some stun grenades. They should at least slow him down a little.”

  We ran in silence through the rain, pushing ourselves as fast as we could. I had excellent endurance, but I wasn’t any faster than a human in good condition. John looked winded, and I was beginning to wonder if he was going to fall behind. He wasn’t technically an agent, and I had let him get tangled up in this. I knew it was his choice, but I vowed not to let him die.

  John looked at his watch. “When the beast comes, he won’t come head on. He’ll hit us from the side. The Wendigo are ambush predators. He’s going to prefer me because I am the one who shot him, so don’t stop running.”

  “I’m not going to leave you,” I said.

  “Miranda is going to be waiting for you, and you’re not going to make it to the lake ahead of the creature if you wait for me.”

  We had run only another thirty paces when a crash in the woods to our right signaled the coming attack. John dove to the side of the road and fired each of his weapons at the creature’s chest. The sound was deafening. The gaping, yellow-green wounds on the creature’s chest weren’t as serious as the stomach wound, and the beast swatted John. He flew a ways and hit a tree, crumpling to the ground like a cartoon character.

  I yanked out my pen and set a two-second delay with two taps of a finger. “Open wide!” I shouted as I charged headlong toward the creature.

  The beast looked surprised for a second, but then it snatched me up. When it opened its mouth, I tossed the pen in. The muffled explosion made the creature’s eyes bulge. He dropped me and gripped his throat.

  I ran to John and helped him up. His arm was limp at his side, and he had a gash on his forehead.

  A pickup was driving by at that moment and stopped to survey the scene. I yelled to the driver that my friend was hurt and needed medical attention, and then I shoved John into the pickup bed and jumped in after him. “Go!” I yelled at the driver, a local in the uniform of the area, a red plaid shirt, who looked half in shock at the site of the Wendigo but managed to throw gravel from his tires as he pulled away as fast as his truck would go.

  The pickup was old and slow, however, and the Wendigo no more turned his attention to us than he was running us down. I pulled out another pen and tossed it at the Wendigo’s eyes. The explosion was deafening, and I covered my ears at the pain as I watched the Wendigo trip and fall, writhing in pain.

  I tapped on the rear window of the cab, and the driver reached around and pushed it open a crack. “Drive like your life depends on it!”

  John kept glancing at his watch. He told me eight minutes had gone by since we hit the road with our newfound friend with a pickup and the Wendigo would be on us in moments. We passed a sign that said Silver Bay was two miles.

  “We’re not going to make it,” I said. I pointed at the trees shaking to our left. “The Wendigo will be here in a moment. Get to safety, and I’ll be at the lake as soon as I can.”

  As the Wendigo loomed up out of the woods at the edge of the road, I jumped from the truck and rolled. I didn’t wait to see if it was following me. I ran into the woods. I tapped my ring.

  My mother and father’s holograms appeared on either side of me, running as if to keep pace though it wasn’t necessary. They could have merely floated there but it was part of their programming to maintain the illusion they were real.

  “Why are we running in the rain, son?” my father asked.

  “There’s a giant beast called a Wendigo trying to eat me, and I was wondering if you two could help me distract it.”

  “You know we are holograms, right?” my father asked.

  “The Wendigo doesn’t know that, though.”

  “Oh, darling, don’t get eaten by the Wendigo,” my mother said, concern in her tone.

  “I’m trying not to, Mom,” I said. “I’ve got a stun grenade, but he isn’t going to let me throw it into his mouth a second time.”

  “Stun grenade? How very nonviolent of you,” my father said sarcastically.

  “Now’s not the time, Dad.”

  I wove and dodged through trees, trying to stay parallel to the road. I couldn’t outrun the Wendigo to the lake, but I could at least slow him down.

  “Should we tell him a story, or what?” my father asked.

  “We’re so proud of you,” my mother said.

  “Still not the time, Mom. Pretend you are attacking him or something. Just confuse him.”

  My mother and father slowed down. They couldn’t stray more than a forty yards from the ring I was wearing, but if nothing else, they could warn me of attacks so I wouldn’t have to keep glancing over my shoulders.

  I could hear my father taunting the beast. “I’ve never seen a creature as ugly as you. What’s your secret?”

  My mother was more diplomatic. “Would you like to talk about your anger?”

  The Wendigo swatted at each of my parents, but they moved effortlessly out of the way. While I leapt through underbrush and over slippery fallen logs, I set the delay on my pen grenade to a second. My plan was simple: when the beast got tired of trying to kill my parents and finally went for me, I’d toss it straight into his face. The other stun grenades had at least slowed him down and I hoped for the same result with this one. I didn’t have far to go now and all I needed as a little more time.

  “You shall not pass,” my father yelled dramatically.

  The Wendigo swiped at him, and I chuckled.

  “Have you ever considered becoming vegan?” my mother asked. “It’s a very healthy lifestyle.”

  That was apparently the last straw for the Wendigo. He ripped a tree from its roots and swiped at my parents. I couldn’t help glancing back to watch. The tree went right through them and the beast roared in frustration and tossed the tree at me.

  I tried to move clear, but as I wasn’t watching where I was running, I stumbled as the ground dipped downward and dropped my pen. One-one-thousand, I counted automatically. Boom!

  I didn’t have time to cover my eyes or ears and the stun grenade worked on me instead of the beast. My parents might have tried to run interference, but I couldn’t see or hear and so could only hope. It took me a few seconds to get to my fee
t, valuable seconds I didn’t have, and the Wendigo uprooted another tree and belted me. He broke every rib in my body and rearranged a few of my organs. I tumbled to the bottom of a ravine.

  I heard water gurgle nearby. It wasn’t a deep river, more of a creek, but I willed my broken body to move and half-crawled, half dragged myself into the water. The Wendigo charged after me.

  The water was only waist deep on me, but the Wendigo hesitated on the shore. The creek was fifty feet across, and I struggled to the other side, my torso aching both with injury and the healing. The Wendigo picked up large rocks and hurled them at me, but they went wide.

  I lay on the far shore panting for a few moments. When I sat up, I saw the Wendigo looking up the creek bed at a bridge. He took giant strides through the foliage toward the bridge.

  I rose painfully and ran through the forest in the direction of the lake.