“How you holding up, Fi?” I ask. I just want to hear her voice to know for sure that she is still behind me.
“I’m okay, Daddy.” Then, after a few minutes, she asks, “How is your eye?” Fucking hell. She doesn’t miss a thing.
“My eye is great, sweetie,” I lie. “Don’t worry about my eye. I need you to look around constantly, and if you see any trees or bushes moving, you need to tell Julie or me. Okay?” Using my daughter as my eyes, I officially feel completely useless.
Willie signals and the group stops. No one is talking. There really isn’t anything to say. He walks back to the group, scanning the area. “I thought this would be a good place to catch a rest,” he says as he sits on a fallen down tree. He is barely winded. My first impression of him as the older, frail grandfather was grossly mistaken. If not for his injuries, he would be the man I’d bet on to survive this mess, but his weakness is starting to show.
Willie is pale, and I know he lost a lot of blood after that animal took off his four fingers. This guy is a survivor, and if it is at all possible, I am going to help him find his grandson. Kyle, on the other hand, has no survival instincts. For the first ten minutes of our search, he’d complained about it being useless and that the only thing we were going to find were the animals, and then we’d all be dead. Willie had looked back at him and finally said,
If you can live with yourself after this is over knowing you didn’t even attempt to find your son, I obviously don’t know who you are
. Kyle had looked like he was slapped in the face. Willie then finished his thought by saying,
I know I raised you better than what you are right now.
After that, Kyle had shut up and followed along with the group. I was sure that, after he repaired his ego, he would come around and help out.
“Do you think it’s safe to stop and rest?” asks Jessica, obviously scared at becoming a sitting target.
I look over at Julie. She scans the area and sees that we have plenty of escape options. “I think this is as good a place as any,” she replies. We all sit down. I rub my eye, hoping that when I take my hand away, I will be able to see clearly. No such luck.
“We’ve been walking around for almost an hour,” Kyle says. He isn’t complaining; he’s simply stating a fact. “How far could those animals have gotten with our chil…
”
He chokes back a tear before he can finish his sentence. He’s been in denial since Kevin was taken, and now the reality of the situation hits him like a truck. Willie sits down next to him and puts his arm around his shoulders. We all sit there in silence. There is nothing to say.
“We’re going to find them, son,” Willie says. He surprises me by how sure of himself he sounds. He then turns to everyone and says, “We’re not in a good situation here. I’m not gonna lie to you all. None of us have any kind of training, we have no weapons other than one combat knife, and most of us are injured.” Everyone’s eyes are fixed on Willie. “We’re up against something that is unexplainable. I grew up on a farm and have been around animals all my life and I’ve never before seen any behave so aggressively. We can sit around and speculate based on the little bit of information from these two--” he points at Julie and me, “--but the bottom line is that we’re in danger, but they also have our kids and my grandson. For that, I won’t stop looking until I know what happened to Kevin and all our kids.”
Willie’s motivational speech was well needed. I can almost feel everyone straighten their backs and push their shoulders back, but the positive energy among the group is short lived. One moment Willie is getting everyone pumped up to search for the children and then, in a flash, the tiger comes tearing out of the woods, viciously taking him down. The arm Willie has around Kyle remains on Kyle’s shoulder as the tiger separates man from limb and pins him to the ground. It happens so fast that no one has time to react.
I hear Julie scream as she pulls Fi and me to the ground. All I see is a large mass on top of Willie. The tiger has opened its massive jaws and sunken its teeth deep into Willie’s throat. A wet, tearing sound echoes through the woods as the tiger rips deeper into his throat. Willie lets out a couple of painful gurgling sounds before the tiger thrashes its head and rips away Willie’s throat along with most of his lower chin.
Willie dies immediately, but the tiger stands there as if taunting us to attack. Black blood drips from its mouth as it chews on part of Willie’s throat. It lets the other parts of Willie drop from its mouth as it stares at the rest of us standing there in absolute terror. It feels like it is sizing us all up to see who’ll be next.
I can hear the beast breathing heavily through its nose. From what I can make out, this thing resembles a tiger in form only. I’m no animal expert, but this is a fucking gigantic tiger for such a small zoo. I’ve been here with Fi a thousand times and we’ve never seen a cat this big. What kind of infection could possibly alter the size of an animal? Could it be the stress of staring straight at death that is making the animal look bigger? Possibly. Fear and stress can really screw with you, but even its fur is different. There are spots all over the tiger where large patches of fur are absent. Its flesh has a bluish-gray color to it and looks diseased, like how I’d expect a corpse to look. Its eyes are the most disturbing thing. They are unlike anything I’ve ever seen on either beast or man. There is nothing behind the eyes. They have the cold, icy stare of a pure predator that knows no fear and feels no remorse. This tiger was altered by something, though whether it was by a virus or natural selection, we don’t have time to figure it out.
One thing we all understand is that this tiger wants to kill all of us, and there may be nothing we can do about it.
I jump when I feel something brush against my leg. I look down to see Kyle reaching for my knife. I grab his hand and stop him. Kyle, in the last few hours, has watched these things take his son and tear apart his father. He wants to kill it, but what the fuck is a seven-inch blade going to do against this beast in front of us?
I look Kyle in the eyes. As bad as my eye has gotten, I can still see his desperation and pain at everything he’s lost. I shake my head back and forth and mouth the words, “Don’t do this.” He looks at me and then over at Fi and quietly responds, “I have nothing left.” My hand falls away from the knife as he takes it.
I can’t let this man go on a suicide mission. I jump up, waving my hands frantically. The tiger’s head jerks violently in my direction and rests on me. I can feel Julie’s hands on my ankles trying to pull me back to the ground. I take a step forward. The tiger stares at me as I slowly walk away from Julie and Fi. I need to distract this monster so Kyle at least has a fighting chance. Deep down, I know he doesn’t have a plan. He is just going to attack and try to get one or two lethal blows in.
The tiger starts to crouch lower to the ground.
Jesus Christ,
I think.
What the fuck am I doing?
Just as I see the tiger’s back legs dig into the dirt, readying itself to pounce, a rock comes sailing out of nowhere and hits the tiger in the head. I look around, trying to find the source of the rock, but only see the fog in my vision. Just then, a barrage of rocks start pelting the tiger. In the movies, this is usually the part where the cavalry comes rushing in to save the day.
But this is no movie and there was no cavalry.
The rocks are coming from Jessica, Julie, and even Susan. Susan’s throwing arm was sliced open, so she is using her other arm. I look back at the tiger. It just stands there, allowing itself to be pelted with rocks. Quite a few hit it in the head and face, but it doesn’t flinch once. “What the fuck is wrong with this thing?” I shout. Even on a rudimentary level, any animal would flinch. Then, behind the beast, I see the faint outline of a head peeking over a fallen tree. I realize it is Kyle. He’d taken the opportunity to go around the tiger as it was being hit with the rocks. It hasn’t seemed to notice Kyle behind it. In a clumsy attempt, the man jumps up , screaming and running full speed toward it. I see Julie grab Fi and cover her eyes. We all know we are about to see a slaughter.
The tiger never takes its eyes off of me. It knows someone is coming up behind it. Hell,
everyone
can see it, but it just stands there. This thing has lost its natural survival instinct. It no longer lives according to the ‘fight or flight’ programming it was born with. It is now a pure killing predator that feels no pain and knows no fear.
Kyle is about five feet away from the beast, the knife raised over his head. It looks as though he is going to go for the ribs. He never gets a chance to find out.
Two feet away from the tiger and seconds before he is going to plunge in the knife, a wolf comes charging out of the woods and runs head-first into Kyle. The impact throws him back about ten feet. The knife in his hand is gone, lost on impact. I could hear Kyle trying to breathe. It sounds like blood is already starting to pool in his lungs. He painfully sits up, leaning against a fallen tree. The wolf is ten feet away from him and slowly approaching. “Fuck you!” Kyle screams. Blood is already dripping from the corner of his mouth. He turns his gaze and then shouts, “Leave my dad alone!” We all turn to see that the tiger has gone back to Willie’s body. It' clamps its powerful jaws around his abdomen, picks the body up effortlessly, and walks back into the woods.
Kyle is crying and coughing up blood. “Why are you doing this to us? What the fuck is wrong with you things?” The wolf jumps into the air and lands on Kyle’s chest, knocking him flat on the ground. It immediately rips his throat out with a loud, wet, ripping sound. Before Kyle dies, it turns and opens his belly with its claws. Kyle’s eyes widen in fear and horror as he realizes he was being gutted alive. The wolf is chewing on part of Kyle as its claws dig deeper into his body. He dies shortly thereafter.
Something drops from the branches above Kyle’s body and lands on the wolf. I rub my eyes to try to see what it is. It doesn’t look like an animal, and no one else in the group is screaming. A man had jumped onto the wolf as it was eating Kyle and broke its neck. Time seemed to stand still as we processed the scene in front of us. Thoughts flooded through my head; was there another survivor from the train wreck? Those soldiers who arrested Sean, did they come back?
The man gets off the wolf and looks over at us and shouts, “Quick! Someone help me!” Without thinking, I rush over to where he stands. He never takes his eyes off the wolf. “Stand on the wolf’s body,” he says in a panic. When I don’t move, he grabs my arm and shouts, “Hurry! We don’t have much time!”
“Time for what?
”
I ask, confused.
“Time before this fucker gets up and attacks us again,” he says as he nods at the fallen wolf.
“What are you talking about?” I question. “Are you crazy? You broke its neck. We all heard the bone snap.”
“Listen to me, asshole,” he yells, more out of fear than anger. “We have about seven more minutes before this thing wakes up and tries to finish the job it started with your friend over there.” I don’t know what to say. From what I can see of his face, he doesn’t seem to be crazy. I put my foot on the wolf’s chest.
“Step down,” he orders. “Step down
hard
.” I press more of my weight onto the wolf. “Don’t move, and don’t take your foot off it. I gotta find something.” He runs around, frantically looking for something on the ground. I look down at the wolf and jump slightly as I feel a twitch under my foot. Was it my leg? It twitches again, this time more violently.
“Hey!” I shout to the guy. “This thing is starting to move again!” I can feel all the blood drain from my face as I realize this beast isn’t dead yet. Worse is that I have my foot on it. I know damn well that, no matter how much pressure I put on it, if this wolf wants to stand, it’s going to stand. “Hurry up!
”
I shout
He comes running back with something in his hand. He apparently found what he was looking for. “Is it moving?” he asks.
“It started twitching a few seconds ago.” I feel foolish. It was probably the wolf’s death spasms as the rest of its life faded from consciousness.
“Okay, don’t take your foot off of it,” he says as he looks me square in the face. “No matter what happens,
do not
take your foot off this thing.” I then see what he was looking for: my combat knife. He drops to his knees. “I can’t believe how fast reanimation is occurring.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” I ask, practically yelling. “Did you just say ‘
reanimation
?’
”
He looks up for a second and then returns to the task before him.
Without hesitation, he thrusts the knife into the side of the wolf’s throat. The wolf jerks violently and lets out a high-pitched shriek. I am almost thrown off the beast. “Keep your goddamn foot on its chest!” the man yells. He begins to saw the knife back and forth inside the wolf’s neck. The wolf is fighting back. My eyes may have been failing me, but I can see clear as day that this thing wasn’t dead. Unfortunately, the Ka-Bar knife doesn’t have a serrated side. Both sides, as sharp as they are, are smooth edges. I now regret not getting the knife sharpened last week.
Blood is spurting everywhere as he puts pressure on the animal’s throat. I can’t see what exactly he is trying to do exactly, but he needs a better plan. The wolf is getting more and more aggressive.