Therion Chapter 5 - Escape

 The beast’s yellow eyes blazed. It roared, thunderous and primal. The crowd braced, holding their ears as the nauseating sound overtook them.

Two strongmen were flung through the air as they tried, unsuccessfully, to control the animal. Others jabbed it with their sharp spears, shotguns blasted at it, but to no avail.

As the creature overcame its captors, Ben saw his chance to escape. Jumping from the ground, he bolted away from the parade, racing toward his truck, sprinting for his very life. His fumbling fingers jammed the key into the ignition, and the engine roared to life. Knobby tires dug into the gravel as he peeled out onto the road he drove in on.

He kept one eye on the rearview mirror, checking for any sign of a pursuer, man or beast. Remembering the canyon ahead, he began to scan for a spot where he could dump the truck and still keep it hidden—no way I’m getting trapped in that canyon.

He drove on, studying the dense foliage for any sign of an entry. There—a gap in the trees. He plunged the gas pedal and cranked the steering wheel to the left. The vehicle plummeted down an overgrown hillside.

Spotting a thicket of brambles and fallen trees. He once more catapulted the truck into a labyrinth of vines. He threw on his backpack and chambered a round in his pistol. No time. He yanked broken boughs over the vehicle, camouflaging it with whatever he could grab.

He took one last look, gave a nod, then began the long sprint. His thighs screamed with the downhill ruck, and thorns clawed at his ankles, but he barely noticed the pain until he splashed through a winding stream. Ben tightened immediately as the freezing water washed over his legs, then relaxed as the burning subsided. He looked down, wanting desperately to drink the water, then thought again as a twig snapped somewhere in the distance behind him.

He struggled up and over the next pass, and finally, he had not only some distance but also the concealment of the landscape. He hunkered down now, becoming smaller, walking on the sides of his feet, silent – like a predator, but he was the prey. He did not eat. He did not drink – he only listened and walked.

Another hour of stalking through soaking wet foliage, he began to hunt for a campsite. Daylight would soon recede into the shades of evening, and then the darkness he was dreading would come. The forest met the stream once more in a flat area suitable for a small hidden campsite.

Black dirt-covered tree roots reached their menacing fingers upward about six feet. Ben constructed a windbreak on either side and covered it with a gray tarp. He concealed it with more branches and forest debris, then crawled underneath to sleep.

 He dug two holes and connected them with a long tunnel. He stood back, looking at his work, “This will do for a smokeless fire.”

Gggggrrrroowwwll, his belly reminded him that he had never eaten back at the town. He started a small fire, then pulled out his rod and cast a line in the water. The night now had taken hold, and Ben curled up under his shelter with a fish in his belly and a prayer on his lips. His breath grew heavier, and the crackling fire faded into a distant dream.

Hours or minutes later, a deafening crack of thunder jolted him awake. A raging storm echoed high off the rocky banks towering over him, but beyond that, softly, there seemed to be – howling. Distant, deep, and guttural, even harmonizing with the thunder.

His senses ignited. He scrambled for his sidearm, but the shadows glancing here and there ripped at his shelter, splintering it before he ever reached the pistol. He rushed toward the sound of the small stream, now a torrent. An exasperated cry tore from his throat.

Something powerful and unseen drove him into the mud, flattening his lungs. Grabbing a broken, twisted branch from his ruined shelter, he thrust it up into the falling rain.

Lightning flashed, turning, for a split second, the night into day, and impaled on the end of his spear was a bleeding, grinning monster.

With a pained howl, it broke away. The shadows, the beasts vanished into the night.

 

Clutching his pistol, Ben cowered against what was left of his shelter, shivering in the rain. He slipped away into a restless sleep full of nightmares. Were the dreams worse than reality? He did not know, so he decided to leave, even before the sun rose. Maybe he could get out of this forest, maybe he could talk to Emma, maybe he could survive.

He trudged north as quickly as he could. He prayed that he could find his truck and that his truck could still be driven out of its hiding place.

“Lord, help me get out of here, help me to see Em again.”

Thoughts of his childhood, full of shadowpeople at his bed, full of nightmares – full of faith. He had people back then. He had a church that taught him how to use his faith to dispel the darkness. The church was gone now. It was on its way out then, which is why it thrived. Adversity only strengthened faith, so the American underground church became stronger than ever. But the faithful grew old and passed away. What they had was somehow not passed down to the next generation. The GTR showed up to raid empty churches. Ben’s own faith had become a memory, something of the past. He hiked, contemplating all these things.

The dawn gave way to rays of sunlight piercing through the trees. When, out of the shadows, appeared the beast.

“No,” Ben pointed his gun at the mountain of a monster. “Do not come any closer,” he shouted as if it were one of his street thugs.

It made a look as if laughing at him, then let out a sound - half growl, half whine. The werewolf’s muscles tightened as it held its arms to the side and lifted its head to the sky. Ben looked on as cracking and crunching sounds emanated from it. Ben holstered his weapon as a man dropped to the ground. He pulled the steel collar over his head and tossed it aside. A dirty, bearded, and bloodied man stood naked before Ben.