CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dawn was just breaking when I woke up. Our tent was shaking and I was frozen in a half-asleep fear before I realized that it was Mitch who was doing it.
“Wake up you bastards,” he said, his voice slurring terribly. “Get the f*ck out here.”
I sat up beside Dex who was unzipping his sleeping bag in the dim light. The air was freezing cold, colder than it had been all night, and I wanted nothing more than to stay bundled up. But when Mitch was telling you to get up, you got up.
Dex opened the tent flap and stepped out into the grey morning. I hurried to shove on my boots and trundled after them, careful not to trip on my loose laces. Mitch was standing by the fire, like he’d never moved all night. The bottle of bourbon was empty at his feet and he was swaying back and forth, his eyes fixed on a spot behind us.
I followed his eyes straight to the front of Mitch’s tent. In the grey mist of early morning, a bloody llama carcass laid there, a gruesome mixture of white and red.
“Holy shit,” I swore, turning my head and immediately heading back into the tent. My first instinct was to grab the camera and if Dex hadn’t looked so disgusted, I could have sworn I saw a hint of pride in his eyes.
“What the f*ck?” Dex asked as I came back out and hurried to turn the camera on. He took a few steps toward the carcass, getting into the shot but not going any farther. I couldn’t blame him. My pulse was raging and it was only by looking through the viewfinder that I could look at the corpse without wanting to hurl everywhere.
“What…oh my God, he has no head,” Dex said, putting his hand to his mouth. He looked back at Mitch for explanation and I swung the camera over on him.
He didn’t look too good. He was drunk off his tree, his eyes still fastened on the dead creature.
“I fell asleep here,” he said, waving at the logs. So I wasn’t too far off with my assumptions. “I woke up just now. Saw that.”
“Is it…Twatwaffle?” Dex asked, peering back at it.
“Yup. The other llamas are still here. Surprised they didn’t warn us. You guys hear anything last night or are you both too useless?”
I took my eyes off the screen momentarily and glared at him. “We were sleeping. And no, we didn’t hear anything. At least I didn’t.”
“Me neither,” said Dex. “Jesus.”
“Can’t save you now,” was Mitch’s dry response. He then spat in the smoldering ashes in the fire.
“But he’s been gutted…”
“What?” I asked in alarm, craning my neck to get a better look.
“Yeah, come look,” Dex said, walking forward, covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve. “He’s been sliced up from top to bottom. F*ck man, he’s just been emptied out.”
“Guess all the good stuff is inside,” Mitch commented. I heard a bottle clink and turned to see him stumbling toward us. I quickly moved out of the way and he went up beside Dex to gawk.
“Who would do that?” I wondered, chewing my lip.
“What would do that,” Dex corrected. “This is definitely a what now. No way would Rigby go through all of this.”
“It’s almost like it’s teasing us,” I mused quietly. “Like it’s showing us what it can do.”
Mitch snorted up through his nose and then spat again on the llama. The sight made my blood boil.
“Can you be any ruder?” I sniped. My tone made me cringe internally but Mitch only shot me a deadly look.
“You’re believing Rigby now?”
“Well I really doubt a bear did this,” Dex countered, stepping back from the llama carcass and coming over to me. He laid a supportive hand on my shoulder. “So yeah, I guess maybe we should start taking at least part of his word as truth.”
“You two are suckers.”
Dex opened his mouth to say something but I quickly stepped on his foot to get him to shut up. Just because I got away with talking back didn’t mean he would. He looked down at me, brows dark and angry, and I tried to quiet him with my eyes. It took all the grinding of his jaw to comply.
I took in a deep breath and looked around me, trying to figure out what was happening. It was growing brighter by the second as the sun was climbing above the mountains, still hidden by the low clouds. But it was growing darker in my heart. Whatever left the llama there had been outside our tent during the night. It hadn’t come after us, for whatever reason, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t out there, hiding in the gloomy trees, waiting for our next move.
“So now what?” I asked Dex feebly. “Now that you and I think the beast is real, what does that mean? Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, go back?”
“Oh we aren’t going back,” Mitch piped up, a dangerous edge in his tone. “We aren’t going back until I kill this motherf*cking creature. I told you I’m a hunter. I hunt and I kill and I’m going to be doing both those things.”
F*ck, I thought in frustration. We should have taken our chances the other day and made a go for Rigby’s while we were able to.
Dex gave me a short, understanding nod then looked back at Mitch. His wiped at his beard and then smiled and I could feel the change coming over him, like he was trying a new persona.
“All right Mitch,” Dex said in a reasoning voice. “We won’t go anywhere. But what do you suppose we do now that we are out here. Wait for it to show up again?”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’ve got guns and nothing but time.”
Actually, we didn’t have a lot of time. Our supplies would only last us so long. It’s not like we were lounging on a beach in Cabo.
“I hear you.” Dex smiled. “Now what do we do with the llama leftovers?”
Mitch eyed the carcass eagerly. “I’m going to take it out into the woods, leave it as a trap. Maybe it’ll bag us a bear or a cougar in the meantime.”
“Cougar, huh,” Dex commented. “You like the older women then?”
Would have thought he was a cradle robber.
Mitch wasn’t even listening. He had grabbed both of the llama’s hind legs and was dragging the poor dead thing away from the tents and toward the forest, a thick trail of blood left behind.
Dex sighed. “I suppose I should go help him.”
I grabbed his coat and held him in place. “Why are you being so nice?” I whispered.
He gave his eyebrow ring a brief tug. “I don’t really think we have a choice.”
Then he left me and hurried after him, picking up the llama’s front legs. Together they disappeared into the woods.
I turned the camera off and brought a bottle of water from our packs and a thing of hand sanitizer. Dex was going to need it after that. Then I wrapped my coat tightly around me and went over to the fire, adding more kindling and wood and prodding it until it was going again. I felt I was safe if I was by the fire, plus the two guns were still right there. I didn’t know if I could handle the recoil of the shotgun but I knew I’d be handy with a rifle if it came down to it.
I could hear Dex and Mitch in the woods, even laughing over something, which seemed wrong and out of place. But at least I knew Dex was still alive and they weren’t being attacked by some beast. So far it seemed that the attacks only came at night and I was hoping the creature was nocturnal. Not that night attacks were great, but I was going to have a heart attack if I had to be in panic mode 24 hours a day.
I just didn’t know what to think. There was something out there, something with the power and the desire to rip the head off and gut a harmless llama. Part of my brain kept arguing with the other, saying that there was no way some unclassified, unknown beast could exist in this world of satellite feeds and YouTube videos. How was it even possible that the fabled Sasquatch might even be true? It just didn’t make any sense in my rational mind. Urban legends were just that - legends.
Yet, we now had proof of something dangerous and terrifying and the fact that it still didn’t seem possible only made it scarier. I’d dealt with ghosts and demons and I thought things couldn’t really get much worse for me. I mean, the only reason I agreed to the whole stupid episode was because I thought none of this was real. I thought none of this could hurt me. I thought I’d be given a break because I’d been through so much already.
I was very, very wrong. And whatever lurked in those dark trees was very, very real.
I rubbed my hands together, trying to get them warm. Even through the gloves, the morning air seeped through, turning them into frozen blocks of pins and needles. I heard one of the llamas snort, so I got off the log and walked around the pile of boulders to my left and over at the patch of grass that the llamas were being kept on. To my relief, they looked fine. Spooked but alive and unharmed. I felt sorry for the animals, wondering if they had to witness what had happened to their buddy. >
I carefully walked toward them, wishing I had spare food or treats I could give them. Their heads were raised, snouts to the air, and the whites of their eyes showed as they rolled around, trying to figure me out.
“It’s just me,” I said, approaching Tonto first. He seemed to calm a bit at the sound of my voice, so I came forward, one step at a time. I didn’t want to freak them out and start a stampede - they wouldn’t get very far on their lead lines.
I paused and gauged the way the lines were wrapped around the tree. Mitch had said that if we turned them loose, they wouldn’t leave. I needed to believe in that because there was no way we were going to keep them tied up and unable to run if some beast was going around killing them.
I had just reached the pine tree and was untying Tonto’s lead with fumbling fingers when I heard a low moan from behind me.
I froze on the spot, the terror seizing me from limb to limb. I had seconds to try and process what the hell I had heard when the moan got lower, nastier. And human.
“You trying to make a run for it, girly?” Mitch’s depraved, sloppy voice roared from behind.
Before I could whip around to face him, he had grabbed my shoulders and spun me around then he shoved me backward onto the hard ground.
I screamed as I fell and the llamas bolted. I fought to get back up but before I could he placed his boot on my stomach and put the weight down, crushing me.
“Dex!” I tried to scream but he pushed even harder, taking my breath away and replacing my world with pain. My arms flailed, trying to grab onto his leg, to fight back, to do something but I could only lie there, writhing, as Mitch towered over me. His face was drunk, and demented with lust.
“You think I wouldn’t notice if you took off with the llamas and left me here?” he sneered. I didn’t think the man could look uglier but here he was, looking like a disgusting, red-faced animal. “You think I’m too stupid to catch on to your plan?”
“Dex,” I cried again, turning my head to the side and trying to see beyond the spots that were forming in my eyes. Where was he? What had he done to him?
With the last reserves of strength I had, I whipped my hand up and dug my nails as deep as they would go into his pant leg. They broke through the fabric and then into his skin.
He yelped and took his foot off in surprise. I used that time to roll onto my side and try and scramble to my feet. I didn’t get far before he yelled, “you bitch!” and reached out. He grabbed me by my hair and yanked me backward until his mouth was at my ear.
“I’m not done with you, girly,” he murmured, warm drool leaching out of his mouth and down my neck. He took his free hand and yanked down at the front of my coat, trying to get at my breasts. I refused to panic and going on sheer adrenaline, I took my leg and kicked the heel of my boot back into his shin as hard as I could, then crunched down on his toe.
His grip on my hair loosened but instead of letting go he threw me forward until I slammed against the tree, my cheekbone catching most of the impact. I held on for a few seconds, trying to figure out where I was, what was happening, trying to figure out how to fight the dizziness that was threatening to take over, the grey that was creeping up on the sides of my vision. My cheek throbbed with starbursts of acute pain.
He grabbed my hair again and flipped me around. I cried out and his other hand went to my mouth, covering it and my nose at the same time. I fought for breath, feeling weaker by the second, while this mammoth beast of a man pinned me against the rough bark, that predatory leer on his twisted mouth.
“Pretty girly all bruised up,” he jeered. “Don’t worry, I’ll just have you from behind. Won’t have to look at your ugly face.”
My heart lurched at the finality of his words, at the separation between my lungs and the air. I was either going to die or I was going to get raped, or both. The whole time I was fearing a beast but I hadn’t been fearing the right one.
“Perry!” Dex’s voice broke through the haze and Mitch’s hand slipped off my nose enough to get a good inhale. I drank it up like water and tried to regain my courage and strength.
Behind Mitch I could see Dex running toward us. His hands were empty and all I could think was get the gun, Dex, baby get the gun. I didn’t want Mitch dead but nothing short of a gunshot wound to the kneecap was going to stop this man.
Dex slowed a few feet away, his eyes wild but in a rare form of control. He looked at me intensely and I felt only relief and anxiety. He was here. And he was going to get hurt.
“Get your f*cking hands off her,” Dex threatened quietly. He sounded far too confident for what was about to transpire.
Mitch agreed. He snorted contemptuously. “Oh, is that what you think? You don’t even have a gun, you idiot.”
“I could run back and get it,” he replied calmly, his eyes like blackened lasers boring into Mitch’s bald head.
“I’d finish her off before you got back,” Mitch told him, practically salivating as he said it.
“Or I could stay here and teach you some manners,” Dex went on to say. He raised his brows and grinned coldly at him. “Which is it?”
Mitch looked back at me, shaking his head slightly. I watched him with widened, fearful eyes as his grip on my mouth tightened. “Oh this oughta be good, girly.”
“So be it,” was the last thing Dex said before he lunged forward and grabbed Mitch by the shoulders. I had one thought, please don’t let Dex die, before he spun Mitch around on the spot. The speed and ferocity in which he turned the oversized man surprised all of us.
All of us except for Dex, who just grinned again, cocking his head to the side like he was examining the psychopath. He took advantage of Mitch’s surprise and in an angry flash of fists, he punched Mitch straight in the face.
Mitch actually flew backward with blood spurting freely from his nose. I don’t know how, or if it was a trick of my mind thanks to the lack of oxygen but Mitch’s feet actually left the ground and he was thrown a few feet, his heavy, hulking body smacking down like a sack of potatoes.
I was free from him now but I grabbed onto the tree anyway, unsure of what to do and if I could and should help.
Mitch staggered to his feet and tried to go for Dex, but Dex beat him to the punch. He leaped forward and tackled him around the waist, shoving him toward me. I yelped and left the tree just Mitch was thrown against it, the back of his head swinging back against the trunk with a sickening whack, pine needles raining on the ground.
Dex tightened his white-knuckled hands around Mitch’s throat, face inches away, gazing down at him with intense hatred. I could almost feel the waves of anger streaming off of him, Dex’s single-minded mission to hurt the man who had hurt me.
“If I see you within a hundred feet of us,” Dex whispered harshly, his words dripping with venom, “I will come back and finish the job. And no, I won’t be using a gun, though you can sure as hell bet I won’t be leaving the guns with you, you f*cking monkey. I’ll be using my hands cuz I can just tell an animal like you can’t stand to lose a fight to a guy like me.”
Dex gave his throat one last squeeze, Mitch’s eyes almost rolling back in his head, his mouth sputtering, before he released him angrily.
He stepped away and had turned toward me, when Mitch sprang off the tree.
I screamed in response and Dex flipped around, instinctively ducking as he went and avoiding the punch that Mitch threw. Dex spun around so he was behind Mitch and delivered a solid punch to the back of his head.
Mitch toppled forward like a fallen giant, the ground shaking beneath him from the impact. It felt like the ground continued to shake but I realized it was just me, shaking where I stood, fear and relief flooding through me like a river unleashed. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Mitch’s body as he lay there, watching him breath slowly, waiting for him to rise again. But Dex was suddenly at me, scooping me into his arms and pressing me into chest. He held me tight and kissed the top of my head.
“Baby, it’s OK,” he soothed. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I fought back tears of confusion. He saved me. But how? Dex was leaner and meaner than ever before. I had felt and seen those muscles on him. They were firm and hard but compared to the fallen meathead, he was in a different class. There was no way someone of Dex’s stature, no matter how newly buff, should be able to take on a man of Mitch’s size.
I swallowed hard and tried to calm my heart. My shaking was slowing down, as Dex held me in place, stroking the back of my head with gentle pressure.
“Baby,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
I pulled my head back and looked up at him, blinking my tears away.
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he said, rubbing his thumb under my eyes. He took his fingers and lightly traced my cheek where I had hit the tree. “This is swelling up.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said, ignoring my cheek. “I didn’t think he was just going to…flip out like that.”
He frowned and closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I should have known…I was watching him. I kept seeing the way he was looking at you. As soon as we brought the llama to the woods, I just had this feeling and before I could do anything he whacked me on the back of my f*cking head. Thank f*ck I woke up in time, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if…”
“I should have said something,” I admitted. “He was coming onto me a few times before.”
Dex’s eyes sharpened. “What?”
I looked away at Mitch’s body. He was still breathing and still out cold.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
I chewed my lip, feeling the pain in my cheek creep up to my head. “I didn’t want you to get upset. You would have called off the whole thing.”
“You’re damn right I would have!” he yelled. I flinched in surprise. “Perry, you should have told me.”
“Then the show would be over.”
“F*ck the show!” he said, throwing his arms out. “I don’t care about the damn show. I care about you and only you. You’re everything to me. Nothing else even comes close.”
He came back and placed his hands on my shoulders, holding me firmly. He eyes roamed my face, and he winced every time they passed over my cheek. “We’ve got to leave and leave now. We’re going back to Rigby’s and then we’re going home. To our home. Got it?”
I nodded dumbly. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Come on, we can’t chance him waking up again.”
We scampered back to the campsite and grabbed as many things as we could, shoving them into our backpacks. The space blankets, flashlights, dried foods, walkie talkies, waterproof matches and extra layers of clothing were all we could fit. We decided we had to leave the llamas behind or they’d only slow us down, but just as we were running out of the campsite, we swung up by the llamas and let them loose of their leads. They trotted away from us, then stopped at the edge of the forest and began to graze. I was sure one day they’d find their way back home. They had time that we didn’t.
Dex took the opportunity to get the map off of Mitch. He approached the slumbering giant like Indiana Jones snatching a relic. I held my breath, my grip on the rifle tight, until Dex’s fingers ripped the map out of Mitch’s back pocket. The man began to stir and we both took off running into the woods, trying to find the path we had come on.
We didn’t have much luck and Dex didn’t want us running around in the open while we looked for the path in. So we headed straight into the middle of it, stepping over rotting logs, uneven ground and brushing past a million branches that pulled at our clothes and hair. We were lucky it was morning and there was enough light in the undergrowth to see but it was hard to look straight ahead when you had branches threatening to poke your eye out.
“I think we’ve lost him,” I said after a while, gasping for breath. Dex didn’t slow.
“Dex, please, I don’t think he’s following us.”
“You can’t be too sure,” he said without looking behind at me.
“But we have both guns,” I pointed out. I was gripping the rifle still and he had the shotgun. We made sure the safety was on both of them, knowing how easy it was to trip and have a major accident.
“We have guns but he knows this place like the back of his hand. And we’re definitely lost.”
My stomach flipped. “Don’t say that.”
He shook his head, still marching forward, brushing past branches and being careful not to fling them at me. “We’re lost, kiddo. Once we get out of the woods though, we might be able to find the way back.”
“We should have taken his compass,” I mumbled.
“It was in his front pocket.”
“Do you think he sabotaged the walkie talkies?” I asked, something that had been on my mind for a while.
“I don’t know. I don’t think any of this was planned, at least not by him.”
I mulled that over. We walked some more, my knees tired from stepping, my shoulders aching from the backpack.
“Dex?”
“Uh huh?”
“What happened to you?”
Finally his pace slowed and I was able to catch up. He still didn’t look behind at me, though his head was cocked, thinking things over.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not the same anymore…” I said quietly. “Who are you?”
A beat.
“I’m Dex,” he replied thickly.
“You’re Dex 2.0. You’re different now.” >
“So are you.”
I reached out and grabbed his hand, getting him to stop. Somewhere off in the trees, a bird flew, flapping its wings noisily.
“I mean it,” I told him, examining his face. “The other day you picked up Maximus with your bare hands. Now you threw Mitch back with a single punch. You’re turning into Chuck Norris.”
“Will you make Chuck Norris jokes about me?”
“No,” I said sternly. I stepped up to him and squinted at his face. He was hiding something, and despite the grey, dim light, I could see it in his eyes. “Tell me the truth. What happened to you?”
He exhaled through his nose and let his eyes search the woods as he planned his answer. I waited. We didn’t have the time but I made the time.
Finally he said, “I don’t know what happened to me. I’m just…I’m still me, Perry. I feel like me. Except sometimes I feel this extra energy kind of swirling around. In here.” He pointed to his chest. “It feels like adrenaline. Or, like, I’m on a f*ckload of meth. And suddenly I know I can do anything. I’m…I just get really strong and I have no f*cking clue why. Or how. I just don’t know.”
He brought his eyes to mine, the corners crinkling gently. “I know how f*cked that sounds and I’m right there with you. It doesn’t make sense but it keeps happening. I don’t know how to stop it and to be honest, I don’t know if I want to stop it. Perry, I ripped a f*cking sink out of the ground when I was in jail. I don’t know how to explain that. I can’t.”
He tugged down his newsboy cap and looked at the ground. “I don’t blame you if you think I’m a freak now.”
“Dex,” I said carefully. “I’ve always thought you were a freak.”
He chuckled, still avoiding my eyes.
I decided to bite the bullet and be honest with him. Even though the mountainous woods wasn’t the most practical place for confessions, it was only fair.
“And I guess I’m a freak too. Because something happened to me. I’m different now too.”
He looked at me sharply. “What?”
I gave him a quick smile and shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Ever since I went into the Thin Veil, I’ve…I’ve been able to project my thoughts. At least to Ada, and maybe Maximus.”
His body stiffened at the mention of his name but I continued, “and I don’t think they can hear it all the time. And I don’t think anyone else can hear it. But, so far, this just seems to be the way it is. People can hear my thoughts.”
A slow smile spread on his lips, causing the dimples in his cheeks to deepen. “I know.”
I jerked my head back. “You know?”
He kept smiling and pulled down at his cap again so I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Jerkface,” I said, punching him on the arm. “You know? You know? How could you…oh God. Oh my God. Dex, can you hear what I’ve been thinking?”
He licked his lips lazily before answering. “Yes.”
I gasped. Then I hit him again, harder this time. “F*ck you!”
“What?” he exclaimed, grabbing his arm. “It’s not all the time. Only sometimes!”
“What sometimes?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Tell me!?”
Oh dear lord, what did Dex hear?
“Nothing too personal, don’t worry!”
I raised my fist at him and he shied away. “I’m being serious. I’ve only heard you a few times. Like, the other day, you were comparing the woods to Lord of the Rings. Stuff like that.”
I thought back at all the times when I was certain he could hear what I was thinking. I felt raw, exposed and mortified. I wrung my hands together. “This is terrible.”
“It’s not. Really, it isn’t.”
I speared him with my gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
He rubbed at his chin. “I wanted to know the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
He pursed his lips and looked down at my boots. His eyes were flashing from some internal monologue. It was a pity I couldn’t hear his thoughts. How f*cking unfair was this?
“I wanted to know how you really felt about me,” he answered, his words barely audible.
My breath hitched and I was surprised at the butterflies rolling around my insides.
“And…what did you find out?”
He slowly met my eyes. He looked crestfallen with brows pressed together. “That you don’t know.”
My tongue felt thick in my mouth and words failed me. I just looked at his face, the way his eyes sparkled sadly, and wished above everything he had figured me out. I wanted him to tell me how to feel because I sure as hell didn’t know.
He touched me on the arm. “Come on, we have to keep moving.”
We had to leave that conversation under those towering trees. We pushed on through the grey.