Lara Croft and the Horror of Colney Heath
Lara Croft fiction by Sarah Crisman
Scrisman@juno.com

To my dear readers,
This story was brought into being after hearing one night of a peculiar tale of folklore concerning an event that happened over 200 years ago in France. In order to avoid giving away the story (which will be retold later herein), I won’t give the title here. But if you are interested in learning more about this tale, and many others, I recommend that you pick up the book, “Unexplained,” by Jerome Clark. It details over 300 tales like this in it, and deals with such phenomena as UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Crop Circles, and many others, with all sources expertly documented in side-notes within each entry. For a devotee of the X-Files, paranormal activity, alien abductions, and the like, I have found no singular reference work to be more complete that this one. But, as always, enjoy the story! And mail me with your comments! ;-)

Love,
Sarah, 1997

This story is dedicated to the memory of Princess Diana of Wales and Mother Theresa of Calcutta. We don’t really know where they are now, but I would like to think it is a better place than here. May they forever remain in our hearts where they will never be truly dead.

* * * * * * * *

{Colney Heath, England. Thursday afternoon.}

“If you’ll just sign there, sir, our lawyers can take care of the rest.”
A thin hand holding a beautifully-decorated black and gold split nib pen moved slowly down over the paper, then stopped at a dotted line on the bottom. Hastily, the hand scrawled an almost illegible signature across the page, then withdrew. The paper was whisked away, and the hand moved off the table. The hand, when followed to the wrist, up the arm, and past the shoulder, could be seen as a part of a tall man wearing a smart gray business suit made by Joseph A. Bank. His tie was a deep navy blue, held in place with a golden tie clip bearing the initials: “JP.” A small pair of wire-rim reading spectacles hung on his nose until the hand snatched them off, casually deposited them in a case, then slid the case into his breast pocket. He turned on the heel of his flat black shoe to survey the trees behind him and gave a small chuckle and a slight grin.
“Mister Pierpont?” asked the man who now held the contract in his chubby little hand. He gave the impression of being one of those nervous types, overly concerned about everything from his age to his blood pressure. His voice, if heard long enough, tended to grate on the listener’s nerves.
Jonathan Pierpont, tall, lean, slightly good-looking when he made the effort, turned again and faced (looked down upon was a more appropriate term, really) the smaller, more heavy-set man who had spoken, and addressed him in a voice that suggested an air of superiority, and a slight twinge of amusement, as though listening to a child speak his first words. “Yes, Mr. Cohan?”
“Well, sir,” Cohan stammered, “I was wondering, just my curiosity you understand, what exactly you plan to do with this forest anyway?”
Pierpont put on a look of feigned surprise. “Why, Mr. Cohan, I would have thought you of all people would know the answer to that question already.” It’s the exact same thing you tried to do with the Coal Hill field and failed, you short incompetent fool, he thought.
“I…well, sir, I have an idea, naturally, but I would like to know…if it’s no trouble on your part.”
Pierpont nodded slowly. No trouble at all, my small associate, unless you try and imitate me. Then there would be quite a lot of it, I should think. “Well, let me put it to you this way,” he began. “A man in my position already has access to vast resources and considerable wealth.”
“Oh, I know that very much,” Cohan agreed. “I mean, everyone knows that much.”
“So, what else would I want a medium-sized plot of land with a forest in it for but to make more money?” Pierpont laughed shallowly at his own statement.
Cohan laughed, more in an attempt at showing his understanding rather than at any humor that might have been found in the remark. “Oh. Of course, sir. I suspected all along, of course, but we were still wondering…”
“Is there some problem?” Pierpont asked, raising his eyebrows. “Do you not feel the price was fair, for instance? Or are you one of those tree-huggers who think forests should remain standing rather than converted into paper products?” His eyes focused sharply on Cohan’s, the intensity seeming to bore a hole right through the smaller man’s skull.
“No, none of that at all,” Cohan said. “’Fuck the environmentalists,’ that’s my motto,” he added quickly after a short pause.
Pierpont’s eyes seemed to light up. “Oh, I understand. Let me guess: this land is a sacred burial ground, and you are afraid that I shall disturb the slumber of sleeping spirits?” He savored the frown that spread across Cohan’s face. “Or perhaps it holds an ancient shrine to a god or gods long since forgotten to time?” Cohan looked at Pierpont even more uncertainly. “Or maybe the whole area is infested with microbiotic organisms that turn you impotent after only a few hours’ exposure?”
Cohan glanced at his crotch momentarily, then looked up at Pierpont, giving another of his now-infamous nervous giggles. “No, well, that is, not that I am aware of, at least,” he murmured, hoping against hope that the impotence theory was just a joke. His wife had been bitching for another kid this last month or so, and that would put a serious strain on their marriage were it found that he couldn’t perform.
“Well then,” Pierpont shrugged, “what’s the big problem?”
Cohan bit his lip, suddenly desiring to get away from this man. “No problems at all, Mr. Pierpont. Like I said, I was only curious after all. Well, I’ll get these papers here to the lawyers this afternoon, and by Monday, you can do whatever you want with it, because it’ll belong to you.” Cohan pulled his things together and began to back away in his business-like posture.
“I like the idea of owning the land, Mr. Cohan,” Pierpont said reflectively, hoping to throw the smaller man off guard even further. “I feel the land owns far too many people in this day and age. The Japanese are on the verge of an economic collapse…why?” he asked with a sweeping gesture of his hand. “Because they don’t have the land resources they need, and their laws regulate the consumption of those few natural resources they have quite heavily,” he stated before Cohan had the chance to reply. “The United States is in the middle of a potential financial crisis…why? Because their lawyers are tying anything and everything related to personal property that they possibly can up in court so they can get fat and rich, and the lobbyists are binding the hands and feet of their Congress in regards to who really owns what. But look at their western states, California in particular. Property values there on the west coast are higher than almost everywhere else in the world. The stock market can rise, fall, or collapse, but it will not affect California in the least, Mr. Cohan. And do you know why?” Again, he answered before the smaller man could even stammer a response. “Because they have the land. It’s time for man to return to domination and conquest, Mr. Cohan. I’m just doing my part.”
Cohan licked his lips, but didn’t reply. He stuffed the contract and a few other articles into his briefcase, and looked up at the graying sky. A small grumble of thunder made it clear that the rain was on its way. With a gesture, he directed his men to their waiting van, then entered his dark Mercedes and rolled the windows up. He looked at Pierpont and slowly shook his head. He had smarts, but they were all completely misplaced. If he wasn’t careful, someone with their head not so high in the clouds was going to come along and tip his precarious throne to the ground. And the sooner, the better…
Another growl of thunder. No doubt about it, there was going to be a fearsome storm tonight. He turned the key in the ignition, waited a second for the car to warm up, then threw it into gear and followed the large van out of the small clearing, watching the figure of Jonathan Pierpont grow smaller and smaller, eventually disappearing in his rear-view mirror.

Pierpont shrugged at Cohan’s odd behavior. That the man was a bastard was very clear. Just curious indeed. What the hell did he care? It was out of his hands now. And when he saw that Jonathan Pierpont was making money, raking it in hand over fist, then he would no longer need to be curious. And he couldn’t be stopped. “Go ahead and rain!” he called to the clouds as they began to spit their contained waters. “It won’t stop me! It won’t drive me off! Rain all you want! I own you now! You belong to me!” His laughter and words echoed deeply into the forest.
And something in the woods heard them.

* * * * * * * *

{2 weeks later.}

Supervisor Byers was attempting to make organization of the chaos that was the construction and demolition crew. For the past few days, the earth movers had been clearing away the trees on the outskirts of the forest. But now they had gotten new orders: begin making their way inwards and clearing at a faster pace. Byers wasn’t exactly thrilled at this news, as it meant his team would be pulling overtime, and overtime had to be overpaid. But since that crackpot Pierpont was calling the shots, he didn’t dare argue. The man could have his job if he wanted it, which Byers severely doubted, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance by screwing up.
His eyes scanned the duty roster for the morning and noticed an empty backhoe sitting in the foreground. He looked at it, glanced around him, then flipped to the daily sign-in sheet. Everyone was accounted for, save for one man, Braden Walton. Scanning down yesterday’s time sheet, he noticed that Walton hadn’t signed out. Either they were dealing with a deserter, or Walton was picking up some serious overtime. Byers suspected the former, and nowhere on the duty roster did it mention any form of screwing around as being a priority. Reaching into his pocket for a cellular phone, he punched in the number from memory and waited as it rang on the other end.

Pierpont snatched the phone on the third ring. “Jonathan Pierpont speaking,” he said in his suave, sophisticated tone.
“Mr. Pierpont?” Byers asked.
No, I felt like faking my name today… “Ah, yes, Mr. Byers. What troubles you today?”
“I seem to have a missing worker down here,” Byers informed him.
“Really?” Pierpont asked, with a touch of irritation. This certainly was not worth his time…
“Yeah,” Byers continued. “A Braden Walton. Didn’t clock out yesterday, didn’t come back on today.”
“I see,” Pierpont said, summoning all his patience. “Then fire him and hire someone else.” This wasn’t a difficult concept… He hung up the phone and uttered a curse.

Byers winced at the crash of the phone on the other end. He knew that was the reaction he was going to get, but he had to report it anyway. “Hey, Mullins!” he shouted at a passing workman.
“Yeah?” Mullins replied, his hard hat jerking on his head as he turned. He shifted the weight of a load of branches that were clutched to his chest.
“Um, you’re off branch duty until further notice. Take that backhoe and meet up with Johnson and Kelly in the woods. Just follow the trail. You can’t miss ‘em.”
“Yes, sir!” Mullins cheerfully dropped the bundle of tree branches he was carrying and ran over to the machine. Anything was better than porting severed tree limbs around all day. With a turn of the key, the motor roared to life, and Mullins guided the lurching backhoe past Byers and down the trail hewn through the trees earlier by Johnson and Kelly.
“Foolish bastard,” Byers muttered, scratching Walton’s name off the list. Well, it was one less man to pay. The company would like hearing that, at least.

{Midnight.}

Clyde Morton was many things to many people. Friend to a selected few, enemy to even more, and flat out avoided by just about everyone else, Clyde had something of a reputation around Colney Heath. It wasn’t so much that he was an evil man; misunderstood, obviously, misguided certainly. No one but his few select friends knew of Clyde Morton’s secret. It was a secret that Clyde guarded with his very life, because that was exactly what would be taken away from him if the truth were ever discovered and made public.
It was well known that Clyde was active in several of the local hate groups that seem to crop up among the citizens of small, out-of-the-way locales. Clyde was a part of groups that hated foreigners, hated feminists, hated the government, and hated charities in general. If the Ku Klux Klan had taken up residence in Colney Heath, Clyde Morton would have been the first member to join up, and more than likely would have made Grand Dragon very rapidly.
On the other side of the coin, Clyde supported drinking at any age, smoker’s rights to light up wherever they pleased, a person’s right to sell and use drugs, and freedom of religion. The first three were keeping with the typical mentality of a person like Clyde. The last one, however, seemed to make little sense…after all, for a man who hated so many other things, religion should have been on the top of that list. This should have made people suspicious, but since Clyde was viewed as somewhat of a crazy man in the first place (a harmless crazy, naturally, but crazy nonetheless), there was nothing anyone viewed as abnormal for him.
The main reason that Clyde Morton, bigot, racist, and xenophobe, supported freedom of religion was because of his secret: Clyde Morton was a very active Satanist.
Eleven years ago, Clyde’s best friend in the entire world, his younger brother, died in the hospital just six short days after the automobile accident that placed him there. Day after day, by his brother’s bedside, Clyde said his prayers, just like his Mummy and Daddy had raised him to, and day after day, Ken Morton got worse and worse. The day his brother breathed his last was the day Clyde swore off God and turned to the Dark One himself for comfort.
As it turned out, there were several other members of the Colney Heath community who had begun down the dark road as well, and before he realized it, Clyde had his own little group of friends and believers. So every Saturday night, and every night of the full moon, Clyde Morton, his two bisexual female partners who called themselves Dark Moon and Royal Crown, and three other members who lived on the outskirts of the Heath gathered together in the woods so conveniently located behind their dwellings, lit candles, set up bonfires, burned incense, read passages from ‘The Satanic Bible’ and the ‘Necronomicon,’ and occasionally sacrificed small woodland creatures, all in the hopes that the Dark Prince himself would look upon them with admiration and bestow upon them the powers of evil.
Clyde so far had kept things going fairly well for his small group, but over the last seven months of activity, they hadn’t received so much as a mild hallucination from their Master, and he sensed that something needed to be done. Fast. A meeting between all members of the group was called, and it was decided that, while it was true that they were doing evil things, they were not being anywhere near evil enough. Sacrificing an occasional raccoon and chanting an ancient spell, Royal Crown brought up, was not enough to show their Prince their loyalty or devotion. Jeff Martuzzo, another member, agreed with this, and gave the idea that they should sacrifice a small child to get the Dark One’s attention.
Now, Clyde Morton may have been crazy, but he was no idiot. He knew that a disappearance in the town would only expose his group, and getting caught and tried for Satanic crimes was not the best way to show his Master his powers. Instead, he opted for a safer route: it was decided that instead of the typical sacrifice, there would be a special one. One animal from the air, one from the earth, and one from the water, would all be sacrificed, their ashes scattered to the four winds. Only in this way would the Dark One take more notice of them.
This was agreed upon by all, even grudgingly by Jeff, who still insisted that they needed to kill a kid one of these days, and the meeting was adjourned. That was two days ago, and now it was the night of the full moon. It was time for the plan to be put into action.
Dressed as he normally did, in his dark maroon robes with the single, large eye stitched to the back (Dark Moon was quite the seamstress), Clyde made his way to the clearing and waited for the others to arrive. Within five minutes, the other members of the group had shown their faces, and the ceremony was set in place. While the candles were lit, Clyde tied a chipmunk, a lake salmon, and a small bat to the stump, which served as a makeshift altar. Chanting the passage from their black spell books, the group watched as Clyde slid his knife through first the fish, gutting it completely, then across the chipmunk’s neck. Wax from the tallow candles was dripped onto the incisions and allowed to harden while they waited for the spells to take effect.
When Clyde came to the bat, however, the creature twisted in its snare and bit him hard on the hand. With a yelp, he dropped the knife and covered his injury. For a moment, there was a fierce fire of pain, then it died away to nothingness. Taking this to mean that his Dark Prince had watched over him to protect him from the pain, Clyde announced to the group that their Master was, indeed, among them. The bat hissed and spat at them while it flopped around on the stump, still held bound by one thin wing.
Then he realized it: yes, the bat was a test. He untied the small, furry mammal and allowed it to bite every member of the group, to show his Master that they were not afraid of the pain. And indeed, after each bite, there was a brief flash of pain, then it subsided to nothingness. Clyde returned the bat to the stump and tied it down, more securely this time, and sacrificed it to the Dark One, then threw the three bodies into the roaring bonfire and watched the smoke rise up into the night.
“Now, we have only to wait and see what our Master has decreed for us!” Clyde announced to his followers, who nodded in reply, and closed their eyes in solemn prayer.
It didn’t take long. Royal Crown heard the snapping twig first, and pointed to the dark form approaching the group. The fire, at this point, had died down quite a bit, and was shedding far less light than before.
“Behold!” Clyde announced to the others. “The Dark One himself has sent us a sign!”
From the trees, there came a growl and a rustling of leaves as the creature, whatever it was, stalked slowly across the forest floor.
A gust of wind blew out the candles on the tree stump, making it even darker.
“He is among us!” Clyde hissed loudly. “Remove your robes and bow down! Pay tribute to our Master!”
The rest of them did as they were told, shivering slightly from the chilly night air, all the while trying to catch a glimpse of the shadow that was winding slowly around their clearing.
“Behold, my Prince!” Clyde shouted at the creature. “We have waited long for your arrival! Show us now your might, that it might change our lives and the lives of those around us forever!”
Clyde had no idea that the smell of fresh blood was what had attracted the creature in the first place, nor that what he had asked for would be carried out in so harsh a fashion, for only seconds after he spoke, the animal bound into the clearing, crashed into the midst of the fire, scattered the embers to the wind, and snarled a fierce snarl.
“Holy shit!” Dark Moon declared, looking up into the sudden darkness that had engulfed them.
When the monstrosity threw itself into the midst of the cowering group, clawing, and biting savagely at everyone, and the screaming began in earnest, Clyde suddenly realized that perhaps the Dark One was displeased with his actions. His final thoughts, as the creature slashed his throat open, were that Dark Moon had been wrong: there was certainly nothing holy about this animal in the least, and that perhaps it would have been safer in the long run to kill a child instead.
It was all over in a matter of seconds. The creature, hunger satiated for the time being, grabbed what few remains were left, dragged them into the hedges many yards away, and kicked leaves and dirt over them.

{Two days later.}

“Mr. Byers?” the radio crackled.
Unlatching it, Byers put it to his lips. “This is Byers.”
“This is Emmens from the exploration group. We’ve got some weird…well…shit out here we’d like you to take a look at.”
“Really?” Byers asked. “What sort of weird shit?”
“Well, I can’t really say. It’s pretty strange though. We just wanted to get your opinion on it before we ‘dozed it.”
“Alright, what’s your location?” Byers asked.
“Um, I’d say we’re about eighty meters down the main trail, and then ten or twelve to your left. I’ll send Graham out there. He’ll lead you back.”
“Alright. Be there in a minute.” Byers snapped his radio to his belt and started the walk down the trail. After a few minutes, he ran into Graham, who led him back to the place where Emmens and a couple other men had gathered.
“What sort of stuff did you dig up out here?” Byers asked the man.
“Well, I’d try and explain it, but I think you should really see for yourself,” Graham answered. “Um…I’m not sure I could do it justice.” They walked on for another minute, then Graham pointed away from the trail where a few other workers will standing around a small clearing. “There you go.”
“Jesus Christ,” Byers breathed as he entered the clearing. Strewn all around were the bones of countless animals, all different species; the most recognizable were chipmunks, raccoons, and one that looked very similar to a domestic house cat. A large tree stump had been sanded down, and a human skull along with two broken tapered candles rested upon it, stuck into holes that appeared carved out with a knife. The stump itself was also stained with dark splotches, and had numerous nicks and scratches in it from what looked like bladed instruments. “What the fuck is this?” he asked quietly.
“No idea in hell,” Emmens replied slowly with a shake of his head. “But something is really weird around here.”
“It looks like some bloody idiot has decided to play witch coven out here or something,” Byers grumbled. He paused, looked at the scene again, then turned to Emmens. “Bulldoze it. All of it.”
“Sir, what if whoever built and did all this finds out?” Emmens asked.
“Hey, what the hell do I care?” Byers said. “We’re under orders from Pierpont to tear everything out here down. That includes any Satanic bullshit we find. They’re trespassing by coming in here now anyway; Pierpont owns the land. I don’t want this kind of stuff around, and I don’t want this getting back to the rest of the workers. And it probably would not be a good thing to tell Pierpont about this either. No reason to stir up unnecessary trouble, got it? We rip out this little hell hole and that’s the end of it.”
“And if John Q. Satanist and his buddies get upset?” one of the other men asked.
“Fuck ‘em,” Byers said. “They shouldn’t be screwing with this shit anyway. We’re doing ‘em a favor. Get back to work.” Byers walked away down the trail, leaving Emmens and his men staring around the bone-ridden clearing.
“Alright, you heard the man,” Emmens bellowed, “let’s get a move on!” The crunching of bones, the crackling of dried leaves, and splintering of trees mixed with the rumbling of the machines to become a very disgusting symphony in the middle of the clearing. Neither Emmens nor anyone else in the group even realized it when the massive machine crunched over the remains of the coven which were decomposing quite nicely in the undergrowth.

{The next day.}

“Man, I am getting sick of this bullshit.” Byers frowned, furrowing his brow, as he looked at the list. Two more dropouts. What was so damn hard about this work that people couldn’t keep up with it? Apparently, it was too much to ask for someone to even call and declare his or her resignation. He wasn’t even bothering to notify Pierpont anymore. The lazy bastard didn’t care one way or another about the workers, just so long as the job got done. The call of a bird off in the distance made him even angrier. “Shut up!” he roared at it, causing several of the workers around him to stare at him bewilderingly. A small finch darted away from its perch to scold him from another tree. “Sorry,” he apologized to them. “It’s the job. Two more guys didn’t show up today.”
The men nodded. They knew what it was like for everyone when workers didn’t show.
“Byers?!?” The voice on the radio sounded panicky. “Sweet mother of God…what the hell could have done that?” That question had been directed somewhere else from the radio, but whoever was talking had kept the Transmit button depressed.
Byers didn’t recognize the voice, but he unhitched his radio anyway, frowning. “This is Byers. Who’s calling?”
“Trevor McIsaac from the east part…oh God, I’m gonna be sick…” There was the sound of someone retching on the other end, and a plop as the radio hit the ground. More swearing and cursing. Apparently, a couple more people had radios on as well there.
“Trevor? Trevor, keep your cool…what did you find?”
“It…I…I don’t know, goddammit, but it’s…” The man on the other end vomited again. “Look, just get some more people out here. Get ‘em out here now!”
“Shit,” Byers swore. Not another burial ground. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing at three workers at random, “come with me. We’re gonna see what’s wrong with Trevor.”
The three took off racing down the trail in Trevor’s general direction.

Byers made it to Trevor first, followed by his other workers. The man had the look of someone who had seen way more than he wanted to. “Trevor? Trevor, it’s OK. We’re here now. What did you find?”
“Can’t go back,” Trevor said, eyes closed, weakly holding his stomach. “No, don’t wanna go back there…”
“Stay here with him,” Byers ordered one of the workers. “You two, come with me.” The three men walked in the direction indicated by Trevor’s shaking finger.
There was a buzzing in their ears as they drew closer into the woods. Byers swatted a fly that landed on his neck. The two men with him were waving their arms about, trying to repel the mosquitoes and other insects away as well. Byers stopped, and stared at a tree next to him. A dark crimson splash of something had splattered upon the bark. The leaves all around were stained with the liquid as well. It seemed to be a trail leading into a grove of ferns. Byers pushed away the bushes and inhaled sharply, swallowing the bile that rose up in his throat. “Oh my God…” The mangled body of a construction worker lay half buried in the grass and leaves. His throat had been ripped open, and his heart and been torn from his chest. The hard hat was still strapped to his head. Blood stained the ground all around him, and a large blob of black flies clustered around his mouth and nose, where the blood had drained and hardened. One of the men with him lost his lunch, and the second looked as if he might follow suit. Suppressing the gag reflex, Byers waved a group of flies away from the man’s bloody arm and turned it over, very curious. The palms and wrists were covered with slashing marks and gouges. Whatever had been attacking him had claws. And big ones by the looks of it. The bone of the forearm was very cleanly exposed by a massive, jagged slash that rode from the wrist all the way past the elbow. He dropped the arm in the leaves and unhooked the man’s ID badge. He spat on it, then worked his finger across the laminated card, wiping off the hardened blood. The picture and name identified the man as being Braden Walton.
“Christ,” one of the men with Byers whispered. “Who was it?”
“Walton,” Byers replied.
“What the hell did that to him?” the second man asked, eyes darting back and forth in paranoia. “We got a lion out here? Or maybe a bear?”
“No,” Byers said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t either of those. It wasn’t any dog either.”
“How…how the hell do you know that?” It was Trevor, who had joined them in the clearing. Two of the men who had been with him before lagged slightly behind.
“I worked as one of the volunteer medics at the London Three-Ring before I landed this job,” Byers replied. “Before that, I was a part-time vet for the London Zoo. I’ve seen attacks from all those animals before. Our lion tamer got mauled by one of his pets, and one of the clowns got drunk and wandered into the tiger pen once. But this isn’t a bear, or a tiger, or a lion attack. Look here,” Byers said, pointing to the arms. “Walton was trying to fend something off. The pattern of these claw marks are consistent with someone who was holding his arms and hands in front of him to ward off an attack. But the size of these wounds tells me that whatever attacked him was enormous. Probably as large as a bear, if not larger. Those claw marks go to the bone. But bears,” he continued, moving his finger up to the ribcage and throat, “don’t do that. Bears do lots of nasty things: they will attack you from behind, they’ll knock you down and spill your intestines, but I’ve never seen, heard of, or read about any bear ripping out someone’s heart on purpose. No wild animal is that cruel.”
“So what are you suggesting happened?” one of the men asked. “You saying that someone or something attacked him on purpose, cut him to pieces, ripped his throat out, then took his heart as a last thought, or a souvenir?”
“I have no idea,” Byers said. “But we’ve got to report this. I’m calling Pierpont. You all, get back to work and wait until I hear what the lazy bastard has to say.”
“Work hell,” Trevor said. “My damn legs don’t even want to walk. And I’m not going anywhere alone.”
Byers nodded. “Alright, you all go back and we go on the buddy system. No one is left alone, not even to take a piss. Tonight, I’ll start calling the circus and the zoos in the area to see if they’ve had any animals escape. But we have to get back to work. Let’s go.” The men disappeared down the path and Byers pulled a small Desert Eagle .22 pistol from his jeans pocket, then opened his phone and dialed the number.

“Jonathan Pierpont speaking,” Pierpont said into the phone.
“Mr. Pierpont, this is Supervisor Byers at the site. We’ve run into a problem.”
So what else is new? Pierpont put on a sneer for a moment, then said, “Well, what is it this time? More deserting workers?”
“Well, them too. But do you remember Walton?”
“Yes, Mr. Byers, he was the first man who left this operation. I instructed you to fire him. Why, has he turned up?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Byers said. “We found him today…with his throat torn open, his heart ripped out, and blood everywhere.”
“Good Lord,” Pierpont said, suddenly very interested. “Have you found anything else of merit?”
“No,” Byers said, shaking his head.
“Well, you were a veterinarian at one time, Byers. What did it look like? What killed him, in your professional opinion?”
“I haven’t a single bloody idea,” Byers said. “Some animal. And whatever it was, it was enormous. We think that something escaped from a zoo somewhere.”
“I see,” Pierpont said, reflecting on this new information. “What action did you take? You didn’t tell the others, did you?”
“No, but I told them to operate in pairs. I don’t want anyone out there alone. And I’d also like permission to call in a hunter or two to look at-“
“You shall do nothing of the sort!” Pierpont exploded. “That land is private property, and I won’t have a bunch of stupid, gun-happy wankers wandering about it shooting everything in sight.”
“Sir, if there is an animal out there, I would like some protection…”
“Calm down, Mr. Byers. I shall look into it. In the mean time, you are ordered to continue your clearing and cleaning operation. Hire more people if you need to, but make certain that you are on or ahead of schedule.” He hung up.

“Stupid, worthless piece of…” Byers eyed the phone in his hand with a severe frown before slapping it closed and stuffing it angrily into his coat pocket. He walked down the trail and rejoined the main body of his crew. “Alright, everyone, take five!” he roared at the workers. “I want each and every one of you in my trailer in ten minutes. We’ve got something to discuss.” He unharnessed his radio and called everyone who was out of vocal range back to the center of operations. Within six minutes, everyone was crowded into Byers’ supervisor trailer.
“Are you gonna tell them?” Trevor whispered in Byers’ ear.
Byers nodded. “I’m not letting anyone work out there without knowing about Walton.” He looked up at the group of assembled men, shifting unsteadily and nervously in the cramped space. “Alright, everyone. We have a bit of a problem out here. Now, this is not about on the job conduct, or discipline, or anything like that. It’s about the death of a worker.”
He waited while this information sank in to the faces looking at him, then he continued. “Some of you remember Braden Walton? He was on the job with us from day one, then disappeared a few days ago. We thought he had deserted. But it turned out he had been attacked by something. Trevor here found his body earlier today. He had been mauled almost beyond recognition.”
“Fuckin’ A!” exclaimed someone. “You shittin’ us?”
“Not in the bloody least,” Trevor said. “I saw it myself.”
“Now, I called Pierpont about this,” Byers said with a frown.
“What’d that lazy bastard have to say?” someone asked.
“He said work is to continue, and that he was going to contact all the local zoos to see if any animals have been reported escaped.”
“Oh, right, gimme a-”
“Fuck that shit, I ain’t-”
“-with some wild animal out there?”
“-lawyer’s gonna have a field day with…”
“We oughta strike, see how that shakes ‘em up-“
“Quiet! All of you!” Byers waited until the murmuring receded to a manageable level before continuing. “Listen. I don’t agree with Pierpont in the least. Which is why I’m reporting that mechanical problems are forcing us to quit early today. Tomorrow, when you all come back, I want everyone armed, and all of you are to travel in pairs or more until they find out where this animal came from and get it contained. I know it’ll slow us down, but if that’s the way it has to be, then I have no problems with it.”
This seemed to calm the workers down for the moment, and Byers went on. “I’m going to look into hiring a professional hunter for this, possibly two. And I recommend that all of you without children leave your weapon cabinets unlocked tonight. I doubt it will track anyone, but I don’t know. I have never dealt with this kind of animal before.”
“If that bastard comes within fifty meters of my flat, I’ll give it a face full o’ buckshot,” one of the workers snarled.
“Yeah, but what if its a cat?” someone asked.
“Then I’ll do it nine times if I have to,” the man replied. This feeling was echoed by the rest of the group.
“Alright, if that’s all, then you all have the rest of the day off. Remember, bring your weapons tomorrow. I want nobody out in those woods unarmed. Good day.” Byers rose and watched the workmen squeeze out of the trailer, then, when they were gone, he closed and locked the door. He picked the phone off its cradle and punched in the number again.

“Pierpont here, how can I help you?”
“Mr. Pierpont? This is Byers from the site. Listen, we had some mechanical troubles, and a bunch of our machines are called in for service. We have to wait for the maintenance crews to get out here and fix it.”
“I see. Very well, Mr. Byers. Chicken out and leave the field before your time.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Pierpont, I’m not pulling out. But I refuse to expose my workers to any dangers. They’ll return tomorrow and be back on schedule. Have you contacted those zoos yet?”
“Yes, I have, as a matter of fact, and none of them reported any animals missing. But I suggest you keep on schedule if you want to keep your job.” Pierpont hung up the phone. “Chickenshit wanker.”

The next day saw a heavily armed group of workmen running the machinery out at the site. Byers himself, true to his promise, paraded from one group to the next, a powerful .10-gauge shotgun clutched tightly in his hands. Having a method of defending themselves from an attacker had seemed to lift the workers’ collective spirits, and there was some singing going on, when the noise of the earth movers didn’t drown it out completely.
It wasn’t until Byers himself stumbled upon the corpse of another worker that the tension resumed. But this body had clearly been there for a while, and after the animals and insects of the forest had gotten to him, he was well beyond any means of visual recognition, for unlike the case with Walton, his name tag and even most of his clothing were nowhere to be seen. Byers had the body hauled off to the morgue for a dental records match, and work continued as normal.
The sound of a gunshot and a scream in the distance brought everyone running to find a scared, white-faced worker holding a slightly smoking MP-206 pistol and one very dead opossum in the weeds. Even though there was laughter, it was very uneasy, and it was clear that everyone’s nerves were strung tight.
As the day pulled to a close, Byers was ready to call his animal predator theory to rest when a terrible, ear-shattering shriek went up in the forest, followed by the reports of several shotgun blasts. “Come on,” Byers ordered, and several people followed him, weapons ready.
“God damn son of a bitch! Come back here and fight like a man! When I get my knife into ya, you’re gonna know just what it’s like to feel pain, you heartless sack of shit!” Anthony Marston ceased his string of expletives and dropped his .12-gauge to the ground where a fellow worker had been attacked. It didn’t take any mortician to figure out the man was dead from the way his chest and throat were torn open. His entrails were scattered throughout several near-by bushes, and his clothes were so stained with blood and bile that it was difficult to tell where the wounds ended and the flesh began.
Byers’ team got to the slain worker in time to be accosted by a crazy-eyed Marston. “Anthony!” Byers said in a calm, yet firm voice. “What happened?”
“I…I don’t know. It killed Terence, then ran off. I heard the screams, and I came just in time to see it running off into the woods. I shot at it, but I don’t know if I hit it or not. But…it was huge,” he squeaked. “It was unreal. Looked like a…like a damn dog, but I only saw the back legs. And if I ever see it again, I’m gonna take it apart with my knife. Startin’ with its balls.”
“I’m sick of this shit,” Byers swore. “This has gone far enough.”
“What are you gonna do?” one of the workers asked wide-eyed as Byers hefted his shotgun. “You’re not going out there to hunt it yourself, are you?”
“No,” Byers replied. “I’m calling in a favor.”

* * * * * * * *

The phone rang insistently, and a slim hand plucked the receiver from the cradle and set it against her shoulder. “Hullo. Lara Croft speaking.” She was laying in bed, with Michael snoozing away next to her, reading the latest Indiana Jones adventure story before she put the light out. She blinked her eyes a couple times to wake them up. “Who may I ask is calling at this hour?”
“Lara? Thank God. I never thought it would be so good to hear your voice again.”
Lara paused for a moment to place the voice on the other end. “Ah, yes. You as well, Chris. It’s a little late to be ringing, don’t you think?”
“Terribly sorry,” Byers apologized, “but there’s been a problem. Are you familiar with Jonathan Pierpont?”
“Of course,” Lara replied. “He only owns one of the largest national businesses in England. He funded one of my trips to Africa a few months ago, and his donations and contributions to the museum have been nothing short of gracious. Why do you ask?”
“A few weeks ago, he bought up a small forest right on the edge of Colney Heath. I’m head of construction for the deforestation process out there, and this project has been hexed from the start.”
“Bad equipment, or bad workers?” Lara asked.
“I could only wish it was one of those two,” Byers said. “The machines have been working fine, and the workers doubly so. Something has been killing my crew.”
“Well, Chris, it is a forest,” Lara said. “I would assume you’ve upset a bear, perhaps she’s protecting her cubs.”
“It wasn’t any bear, Lara. I’m holding the medical examiner’s reports of the last victim in my hand right now. Turn on your fax, and I’ll show you.”
“Alright…hang on while I move to the cordless.” Lara got out of bed, her bare feet softly padding across the floor, and took the cordless phone from its recharging station, clicked it on, then hung up the other phone and made her way through the dark house and down the stairs to the fax machine. Though any other person would have been taking his life into his own hands by navigating through the maze that was Lara’s house in the dark, Lara herself knew where every piece of furniture in her home was from memory. She reached the fax machine easily, flipped it on and listened for the beep that signified it was ready to receive a document. “OK, I’m here.”
“I’m sending it through now,” Byers informed her.
Within seconds, Lara’s machine whirred to life, first emitting a horrendous squacking noise to signify a connection had been established, then spitting out the first of several pages. She flipped the light switch next to her, shut her eyes until they had adjusted enough to the light, and squinted at the paper that she held in her hand.
“Are you getting it OK?” Byers asked.
“Yes…” Lara replied uneasily. “But are you certain this is the right report?”
“Damn sure,” Byers reassured her. “I saw the bodies myself.”
“This can’t be right,” Lara mused, scanning the page and pausing to read some of the more interesting parts. “Severe trauma to the upper dorsal region…removal of the carotid artery and jugular vein…” She continued to stare at the document in disbelief. “Partial mastication of the heart?” she asked incredulously. “Multiple lacerations to the palms and lower arms…shattered femur, dislocated shoulder… Dear God…”
“See what I mean?” Byers asked.
“This makes no sense,” Lara said. “I mean, most of this looks consistent with an animal attack of course. But there are a few problems. The removal of the heart is not any practice of animals. And the femur is one of the strongest bones in the adult human body. It takes an unbelievable amount of pressure to snap it, which indicates that whatever attacked this man must have either stood or jumped up and down on him while it mauled him. Were there any eye-witnesses?”
“Sort of,” Byers said. “One man saw it running off. He claimed it looked like a big dog. He shot at it, but he thinks he missed.”
“It wasn’t any dog that did that,” Lara said. “It would have had to weigh over 300 kg. That makes no sense, if it was running all over the place. And what does this have to do with me?” Lara asked, fearing she knew the answer already.
“Pierpont refuses to take action on the matter,” Byers said. “Anything that requires him to get off his lazy ass, he’s not interested in. I need someone to hunt this creature down. And who better to do it than the girl who’s wrestled her way out of being the dinner of a snow leopard?”
“Chris…I’m an explorer, not a hunter…” But Lara knew where this was going, and her memory began to dredge up images and memories of being freezing cold, scared, and completely alone. Unknown to her, on the other end, Chris was doing exactly the same…

The helicopter dropped through the cold air, barely stirring the densely-packed snow as it touched down. One of the people in the cockpit pointed down to a massive wreck of twisted metal that was sprawled out across the mountainside. The pilot nodded his understanding, and slowly descended, ending in a hover about a half-meter off the ground. The back door of the copter slid open, and several men in winter survival gear dropped to the snow-packed earth and fanned out in a search pattern, looking for any sign of life at all.
“Damn,” one of them cursed at both the cold and the wreckage.
A second person produced a camera from a hip pouch and proceeded to photograph the entire area. The place where the wing had snapped off the main body, the huge, gaping hole torn in the fuselage, the shattered main windshield, the luggage which had exploded open in the crash, and the parts of the bodies that would later have to be flagged and shipped back home in the hopes that enough of them could be assembled to make a corpse that was somewhat identifiable to the family.
“Anyone know how this happened?” someone else asked.
“Wing scraped a mountain and tore an engine off,” a fourth person said. “They tried for an emergency landing, and we never heard from them again.”
“Guess I know why then,” the third man said, running his hand across a large gash in the side of the plane.
The one in charge pushed his chin microphone closer to his mouth. “You can bloody well forget about this one, Dan. No way in hell anyone survived this mess.”
“Keep checking, Chris,” the voice crackled over the radio. “They ordered a thorough search, so we’re gonna give ‘em one.”
“Right. But I’m telling you right now…there’s little bits of people everywhere out here. It isn’t pretty.”
“You expected this to be a pretty sight?” Dan growled through the microphone.
“No, but I don’t think you can prepare for something like this.”
“Well, just do the best you can as fast as you can. Unless you’d rather wait until nightfall to do this when it’s about thirty degrees colder?”
“Uh…that’s a negative,” Chris replied. “We’ll look around, but I really don’t think…” His remaining thought trailed off into the wind. “Oh my God…”
“Chris? What’s wrong?”
Ignoring the man on the radio, Chris instead turned to the members of his team. “Hey! Anyone been walking over in this area?” He had to shout to make himself heard against the ferocious wind that was pounding the mountainside. This has got to be a joke…
The shakes of the heads from the rest of the team confirmed his suspicions.
“Chris, what’s going on out there?”
“Um…I don’t know how on earth this is possible, but I…found footprints.”
“Jesus Christ, don’t kid about that!”
“Looks like they were driven into the icy layer on top of the snow, so they didn’t get blown away. Covered over and filled in a bit, but these are definitely tracks. They lead away from the crash site, and into a nearby cave. Should I follow them?”
“If you’re serious, all you’re likely to find at the end is a corpse that’s frozen solid, but go ahead. And keep your eye out for the girl that was with them all. Lord Croft wants what’s left of her body back so he can give it a proper burial.”
“Why not just dig up half the fucking mountain and send it back home?” someone snorted. “These people think it’s easy to figure out whether this little piece came from a fifty year old male’s arm, or the leg of a nineteen year old girl…”
“I’ll be on the look out, Dan” Chris replied, casting a very harsh glance at the one who had spoken up before. “Byers out.” He stared at the footprints in the snow, then started to follow them. They led into the shelter of a miraculously snow-free cave. But there wasn’t anyone inside. This doesn’t make any sense…someone survives the wreck, stumbles half-dazed into a nearby cave with no exits except the entrance…so where the hell is the body?
It wasn’t until Chris saw the tracks leading out from the other side of the cave that his jaw dropped. His hand went to his radio again. “Dan, this is Chris. Someone definitely survived this crash, and not only that, but walked away from it fully intact. I’ve got footprints going into and leading away from the cave!”
“Get your men and follow those tracks,” Dan ordered. “If there is someone alive down there, they won’t be in very good shape once you get to them.”
Chris looked at the footprints as they traveled across the snow and away from him until they were no longer visible. Whoever this was, they had stamina. Maybe the pilot? Pity about the girl, though. Twenty one years old and killed in an airplane accident. He sure wouldn’t want to trade places with her family for any amount of money.
It didn’t take the team long to realize that these tracks led a LONG distance. With the wind stinging their skins, even through the thick winter parkas, gloves, scarves, and goggles that served as standard cold-area rescue gear, they marched back to the chopper and made the decision to follow them by air. It wasn’t until their search led them into the middle of Tokakeriby village, nearly thirty miles from the crash site, that they realized whoever it was had survived somehow.
After setting down in the main square, the men scrambled out of the chopper. “Nevins,” Byers ordered, “find the doctor.” Didn’t realize we might have to remember that language stuff…After all, the search wasn’t supposed to take us into the village thirty miles away from the accident to find a survivor.
Nevins walked up to the closest native. “Yahaa daktar chha?” (Where’s the doctor?)
The rather confused man turned and pointed. “Tyahaa.” (Over there.)
“Come on.” Byers led his group in the direction the man had pointed. They ducked under the low door frame and stepped inside, where the doctor greeted them. “Tapaailai sanchai chha?” (What’s troubling you?)
Nevins quickly explained that they were looking for a foreigner who was the victim of a plane crash. Shaking his head (which meant affirmative in the Nepal culture, Byers remembered), the doctor walked them to a small room where a bed was laid out against the wall. The pile of blankets rose and fell in a slow rhythm, apparently a person breathing, probably asleep, and Byers walked over to the bedside.
The figure under it stirred, revealing a small patch of long brown hair. One of the women… He put his hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am…Ma’am, wake up.”
The woman under the blankets turned over and opened her eyes, blinking the sleep out of them. Someone who spoke English! This had to be a dream…
“Ma’am, please…we’re here to take you home.”
The woman nodded slowly. “Who are you?”
“My name is Chris Byers. My team and I got sent to look for survivors from that plane crash from two weeks ago.”
“Oh.”
She was really out of it…probably the medication… “Can you stand? We need you to come back with us.”
“Yes, I can get up.” She moved the blankets off her small frame and sat up, holding her head slightly. Byers helped her to her feet and thanked the doctor for his help, then hefted her off her feet entirely and carried her the rest of the way to the copter.
Once inside and in the air, it occurred to Byers that he had neglected to find out who the woman was. “Just for the report, Ma’am, we need to know your name.”
“My name’s Lara Croft,” the girl replied sleepily. “Will Daddy be waiting at home to see me?”
Byers’ jaw dropped.

“Lara.” There was a firmness in Byers’ voice now. “Two years ago, I was a part of the rescue team that got you back home after your trip to Nepal, and you promised me that if I ever needed anything at all, that you owed me a favor. I don’t necessarily need you to kill it, I just want an advisor. I want someone competent out here, someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. And most of all, I want as many people out here as I can get. Know anyone you can bring along?”
“I have a…friend,” Lara stammered. “Chris…what have you done out there? What did you stir up?”
“I’m not sure even God knows the answer to that, Lara. I’ll see you down here tomorrow morning around six, if that’s OK.”
“Six is fine.”
“Don’t be late.” Byers hung up, and Lara made her way back up the stairs in the dark, forgetting about the portable phone. She sat down heavily on the bed, causing Michael to wake up.
“Hey, be more careful next time,” he groaned. “I was having a good dream.”
“Sorry. Tomorrow, we’re going on a field trip.”
“Really?” Michael asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Where to, exactly?”
“Colney Heath. Little place about a twenty minute drive from here.”
“Is that going by the way you drive, or sticking to the posted limit?” he joked.
“That mouth is going to get you into trouble one of these days,” she warned him.
“Already has,” he replied. “It started the first time I kissed you, and from there, I knew it was just walking down the road to the Dark Side.”
“This is serious,” Lara said. “Some workmen are getting killed.” She paused and glanced at the papers in her hand which were still warm from the fax machine. “Well, torn to bits, assuming this report is right. A friend that I owe a favor to wants us down there as advisors and extra bodies.”
“I don’t like the sound of the ‘bodies’ part,” Michael argued.
“I can’t back out on this one,” Lara said. “I owe him my life, really. So sleep while you can. Because at six on the morrow, we are going to be at a construction site.”

“What a mud hole,” Michael complained as the site came into view. “You know, if they didn’t rip all the trees out of the ground, they wouldn’t get stuff like this when it rains…”
“We’re not here to survey the site,” Lara reminded him. “We’re here to figure out what the dickens is killing these workers.”
“A bear or something,” he offered.
“No,” Lara shook her head, “not a bear. Look, all I know is what Byers told me and what the report showed. Whatever is doing this is ripping these men to shreds, and nothing that lives around here does things like that.”
“Sounds like a fun way to go,” Michael said gloomily.
“I could think of better,” Lara agreed. “Here we are.” She stopped the car, and the automatic seat belts slid away from them as they opened the doors.
“Christ…Is this a construction site or an armed resistance camp?” he asked quietly to Lara as they stepped out of the car. He looked long and hard at the weapons each worker was carrying. “The Marines would be hard-pressed to hit this place!”
A large, mean-looking man carrying a semi-automatic rifle stepped up to them. His beard was rough and unkempt, same with his hair, and, apparently, his mannerisms. “Can I help you find your way out of here? This is private property.” He flexed his tight biceps as an invitation for them to try anything.
Lara tilted her head to the side and smiled her impish grin she was so famous for. “Why, how nice of you to tell me. I already knew that, but now we’re communicating on the same level.”
“Look, lady, I don’t know who the hell you are, but I got orders to keep everyone off this site, irregardless of how pretty they think they are, or how cool.”
“OK, look big guy. The deal is, we have orders to be here,” Michael tried.
“Well, sorry to break it to you, little boy, but my orders come from a bit higher up.”
“We’re looking for Supervisor Byers,” Lara said. “If you’ll just show us to his trailer, I’m sure he’ll-“
“No, I don’t think so,” the man retorted. “You appear to understand English, since you don’t have trouble speaking it, so I’m gonna give you one last chance to just turn right around and leave. Otherwise, we could have trouble, and we can’t have that, now can we, sweet cakes?”
“Not at all,” Lara agreed. With speed that was a blur even to Michael, who suspected that it might be coming, Lara withdrew her pair of magnums and had them to the man’s head, one on each side. “There won’t be any trouble, now that I have your undivided attention and your head is out of your ass. Now, I have both ears covered, and if I get the impression that one of them isn’t listening to me, I’ll remove it, free of charge. So I suggest you listen well. Mr. Byers called me late last night, informed me of what is going on here, and requested that I come down and take a look. I promised him I would, but it looks like I’m a tad bit early, as he’s not here yet. So, why don’t we just wait for him, and I’m certain that he’ll sort this all out.”
“Hey, wait a minute…are you Ms. Croft?” the man asked suddenly.
Lara nodded. “Yes. And who might you be?”
“Edward Sonenberg,” the man replied. “Sorry not to recognize you, but I wasn’t expecting two of ya to show up. Mr. Byers didn’t say anything about a kid coming too.”
A glare from Lara removed the intent of hostility from Michael’s eyes.
“Yes, well, I neglected to mention it.” They looked around to see Byers standing there. “You two wanna put those toys away before someone gets hurt?”
Lara holstered her weapons, and Sonenberg returned to his ready stance. “Sorry, Chris. Just a little…edgy, you know?” He licked his lips and turned to look into the trees around him.
“I know quite well,” Byers agreed. He turned his attention to Lara. “Well, Ms. Croft, welcome to what’s left of Colney Heath forest.”
“Please, Chris, call me Lara,” Lara requested. She looked at her companion, and gestured with her arm. “This is Michael.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Byers said, extending his hand and grasping Michael’s. “You may want to arm him. I have no doubt about your sharpshooting ability, Lara, but I wouldn’t trust it that far. At least, not under these circumstances.”
Lara nodded, tossing Michael the pistol he was most familiar with from her sack. “I was prepared for just about everything, Chris.”
“Here,” Byers offered, “let’s go to my trailer. It’s not far, and it has air conditioning. You’re gonna want it more comfortable for what I have to tell you.”
“Didn’t you tell me everything?” Lara asked, following Byers through the mud.
“Just a minute. Wait until we get to the trailer. Oh, you weren’t followed, were you?”
“No,” Lara said, “should I have been?”
“Not at all,” Byers said, stepping over a fallen tree trunk. “I just know you’ve got a bit of a reputation for these sorts of things.” They climbed a short rise, then Byers pointed to the trailer. “There it is. Go on inside. I’m gonna call for a couple guards, then I’ll be in with you.”
Lara and Michael opened the door to the beaten up construction trailer that had been used in so many jobs over the years that the name of the company was just barely visible on the side. Sun, rain, hail, snow, and probably a few other things had taken the toll on the logo since it was painted on. Michael heaved a sigh as the cool air inside hit his face, a welcome relief from the humidity outdoors. Lara walked in as well and shut the door. She seated herself next to Michael on the small couch inside. It was clearly as old as the trailer was, with rips and tears of various sizes in the upholstery, and a sag in the cushions, but it made for comfortable seating. A small micro fridge rested on the floor behind the desk, humming slightly. The lights overhead were all in working order, however, and the windows, made of reinforced glass crisscrossed with wire screens both inside and outside lent an air of safety inside.
Byers opened the door and stepped inside, gasping with relief as the cool air washed over him. “Sorry about that. I just don’t want to be caught unawares if this…thing decides to attack again.”
“OK, Chris, let’s get settled on this,” Lara said. “I need to know everything that happened to you and your team ever since you started working out here. Everything from before the attacks, and everything after they started.”
Byers nodded and began to fill her in. “Well, like you know, Pierpont bought this land from one of the local developers. I haven’t the faintest idea why, but I do know that he paid the asking price flat out. No haggling, no negotiation, nothing at all.”
“Odd,” Lara agreed, “but hardly proof of anything. Pierpont certainly could have easily afforded triple the price, I would guess.”
“Yeah, but you know how stingy some people are,” Byers shrugged. “I wondered about it anyway…I mean, what’s in a forest, anyway? Rocks, dirt, trees, some animals… Nothing that has any sort of strategic or defensive value that I can think of. Wood, after all, can be bought at a lumber yard, and this stuff is just being discarded as far as I know. He’s not keeping it for anything. Anyway, after the land deal was closed, there were the typical bids offered to clear it out. My company just happened to get nominated for the deal, and so I got sent out here with a crew of about thirty workers to start the operation up and assess the level of difficulty presented in clearing out a small forest like this one.
“Well, the clearing was going fine, up until the day Walton disappeared.”
“That’s the first victim?” Michael asked.
“As far as I know,” Byers nodded. “He was the first one who didn’t show up on the checklist. The others went missing later. But you saw the report, and I saw the bodies…Lara, I just don’t know what to make of this. I mean, it’s like we pissed off Mother Nature herself here; people just disappear, and nobody even sees what happens.”
Lara leaned back on the couch to digest this information.
“You are certain that’s everything, Chris?” she prodded. “Because all that you’ve told me leaves me nothing to go on except that its a wild animal of some kind. There was nothing else at all?”
Byers thought for a moment. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, a couple weeks after we started work, Emmens and his group found some strange shit in a clearing.”
“What sort of strange shit?” Michael asked, trying to make himself feel useful.
“Well, let’s see now…there was a large tree stump in the ground. Bones scattered everywhere. There was a skull and a couple candles on the stump, and it was stained with dark red splotches that ran down the side. It almost looked like the tree itself had bled. Come to think of it, the stump had been beaten up pretty badly. There were a lot of cuts like someone drove an axe into it repeatedly.”
“Dear God,” Lara breathed. “Was there anything else? Books, scrolls, bottles, anything?”
Byers shook his head. “Well…the remains of a campfire, but nothing else important that I remember.”
“Take us out there,” Lara ordered, standing up. “I want to have a look.”
Byers bit his lip. “Um…I’m afraid I can’t do that. After I saw it, I ordered my men to bulldoze it.”
“Oh shit,” Lara muttered, sinking back into the couch. “I’m getting some really bad theories about something.”
“Lara…that satanic stuff…it’s all bullshit, right? I mean, those people can’t really summon demons and curse people, can they?”
“I certainly hope not,” Lara said, “otherwise you could all be in big trouble. How many people have seen this creature?”
“Not counting the dead and missing-presumed-dead workers, just one man. And he doesn’t work here anymore. His wife checked him into the local mental hospital because she thought he was making it all up.”
“Um, nobody is suggesting that this thing is demonic in nature, are they?” Michael asked. “Because if they are, I think everyone should just get the hell out of here and let whatever it is run its course, let it be king of the jungle, and leave it the hell alone.”
Lara stood up again, and began pacing. “Chris, to your knowledge, has anyone outside the site been attacked? Anyone followed home, perhaps, or anyone from the town injured? Any of the farmers near here reported missing cattle or sheep?”
Byers shook his head. “No. I’m sure it would be all over the papers and the tele if it had, unless it had just been a wanderer. No, I think this animal or whatever it is is just sticking to the forest.”
“And let me guess…when you started clearing, you stirred up all sorts of wildlife: opossums, deer, things like that. And now you haven’t seen many, if any at all?”
“Well, come to think of it, yes, but we just assumed that they were leaving because we were clearing out the forest. You know, the whole ‘destroyed-their-homes-so-they-move-on’ bit.”
“But if that were the case,” Lara continued, “you would still be finding them every time you broke into a new section of forest, is that right?”
Byers nodded. “Yeah…and I haven’t seen a single damn thing out here in days, except for the birds.”
“Maybe they got scared and moved away?” Michael offered.
“No chance,” Byers said. “Animals are very reluctant to leave their homes, except for short periods of time. We would keep seeing them, even if the machines spooked ‘em for a bit. They always come back. Dear God…what happens when it runs out of forest critters to munch on?”
“Maybe it already has,” Lara said. “That would explain the attacks on your men.”
“Shit,” Michael swore. “How close is the town?”
“A mile, maybe less,” Byers said. “We could walk there in about half an hour. By car, it would take a matter of minutes.”
“Damn,” Lara cursed. “We’ll have to evacuate the town.”
“Woah, hold on there, Lara,” Byers said. “I don’t have the authority to do that. I really don’t even have the authority to allow my men to be armed, but if it keeps them working, then I have to do it. Pierpont never comes down here. He’ll never know.”
“But this is serious,” Lara said. “And this can’t be kept under wraps forever. Once the first person in the town gets killed, once someone goes out to work one morning and doesn’t come home, the shit will hit the fan, and then you’ll get the news media all out here, combing the forest looking for…” She broke away, head cocked, listening for something.
“Lara, what is it?” Michael hissed. “What do you hear?”
“Nothing,” Lara said. “And that’s what worries me. The birds were chirping not a moment ago.”
Byers looked up in alarm and hurried to his desk, wrestling a drawer open and pulling out his gun.
“Call your men in here,” Lara ordered.
Byers ran to the door and flung it open. “You two! Get in here now! Hurry the hell up! It’s out there!”
A look of utter panic crossed the guard’s eyes as they ran for the door. The first one slipped in the mud, however, and as he grabbed for something to support him, all he found was the second man’s jacket, bringing him down on top of him.
A vicious snarl erupted from the trees beside the door, and something hurled its weight into it, slamming it closed, and tossing Byers across the room, against the wall.
Weapons drawn, Lara and Michael glanced out the windows, but could see nothing. Then, after a long moment of silence, there was a fierce roar, and two screams. The rustle of branches was heard, along with stirring air, and the scrambling of the guards outside as they hollered for help. Lara shook off the moment of panic first and ran over to Byers, saw he had been knocked unconscious, then turned around and grabbed the door knob. But the door had been thrust so violently against the frame that it had lodged and bent itself firmly in the aluminum and refused to budge as Lara slammed her body against it again and again, teeth clenched with intensity.
The screams outside abated in ragged, bloody gasps, and dark crimson fluid exploded against the window Michael was trying to look out from. “Jesus Christ!” He stumbled backwards from the window and tripped over his own legs, sending him crashing to the ground.
His ears straining for sound, he heard pleas of mercy, and a soft moaning. This culminated in a frenzied, high-pitched shout, then a stomach-turning scream that was ended very prematurely. The sounds of ripping flesh and the crunch of bone lingered for a moment before there was a final snarl and then utter silence.
Lara continued to work the door while Michael held his hand to his chest, certain that his heart would jump out of it if he didn’t keep it inside.
A nerve-jangling thud echoed inside the trailer as something heavy landed on the roof, and Michael jumped in the air, eyes wide. Trying to guess the location of the thing, he fired his pistol into the ceiling, causing a small dent in the reinforced metal. There was a roar of surprise from outside, then more thumps as it walked about on the roof, searching for a way in. Michael fired again in the general direction, but the slugs bounced off the interior harmlessly.
Lara turned away from the door, aimed her magnums carefully, then sent two shots screaming from the weapons. The armor-piercing rounds easily tore through the roof, opening up twin eye holes that light shone dimly through. She got the impression of a large animal with gray fur before there was another snarl, and it lept off the roof to scamper away into the woods.
After a few minutes, the birds resumed their singing, as though they were oblivious to the tragedy that had just played out on the ground below them.
Michael’s legs gave out, and he sat down hard on the floor, breathing in heavy, deep breaths, trying not to hyperventilate while, at the same time, trying not to have a heart attack.
Lara’s eyes turned to slits as she regarded the door, and aimed a brutal kick at it. The sound of scraping metal was audible, and the door snapped off its hinges and crashed to the ground outside. Magnums drawn, she poked her head out the door and looked around. The scene that met her eyes looked as though it had been pulled from the screen of a horror movie. Blood coated the entire outside of the trailer, the ground at her feet, and the nearby trees. It ran in rivers, mixed in with the mud, down the small incline and pooled in the tiny sinkholes of the path. What was left of the two workers wasn’t enough to write home about. The mangled remains of the men’s shotguns lay twisted, shattered, and broken several feet away. A single piece of leg, between the boot and the knee, was the most intact piece in the area. The flesh where the joint of the knee would have been was very jagged, suggesting it had been ripped and torn off rather than severed with a clean bite. A length of entrails was pulled in a trail from the stomach of one of the men, but stopped abruptly with a gnawed off end.
“Lara, where are-“ Michael looked out the door and stumbled back inside, his hand over his mouth.
Byers stirred on the floor, then stood up and made his way to the door. “Dear God,” he winced, looking at the remains. “How am I gonna explain this?”
“You’ll explain it by calling off the project and sending everyone home,” Lara replied.
“Lara, we’ve already been over this…Only Pierpont has the power to call this job off. I just can’t do that…”
“Chris, you have to stop this.”
“Lara, I don’t have that kind of authority!”
“Listen to me!” Lara shouted at him. “You have all the authority right now! There is nothing you can do to help those men out there if they stay here! And you cannot help the people who have been killed! You have to take the chance that this thing will not follow anyone and just get the hell out of here. Right now!”
“But…but Pierpont will have my job if I pull out,” Byers argued weakly.
“That thing out there is gonna have your life if you don’t,” Michael pointed out. “And even if it doesn’t kill you, it will keep killing others. Can you justify their deaths by staying here in this area? And how long do you think it will take before the rest of the men out there decide to take matters into their own hands and desert anyway?” Lara pressed.
Byers put his head in his hands. “No…damn it, Lara you always did know how to hit the right nerve.” He stood up shakily and reached for his radio, his throat suddenly very dry. “I’m giving the order right now.” The velcro strap ripped loudly as he opened the case and withdrew the small device, placing it to his lips and pressing the call button. “This is Byers, transmitting on emergency channel. Consider this to be an order from Pierpont himself: all workers are to leave the construction site immediately. This project has been called off until further notice.” He paused, inhaled, and spoke again. “Repeat, the project has been canceled. Everyone is to leave the construction site immediately, and not return until contacted by me, and me alone.” He shut the radio off, then sank to the floor.
Lara knelt down next to him. “Chris…you did the right thing. Trust me.”
“I already trust you, Lara,” Byers replied. “If I didn’t trust every word that came out of your mouth, I wouldn’t have done that. I may as well just rip up my resume right now though…Pierpont will make sure that I don’t ever get a job again.”
“Fuck him,” Michael said angrily. “Who the hell is this jerk-off, anyway?”
“Jonathan Pierpont is one of the wealthiest men in Britain,” Lara said. “He owns numerous plots of land, buys and sells stocks on several markets of the world, and he contracted for Mr. Byers here to clear out this forest.”
“I guess I owe him something for that,” Byers said. “After all, if he hadn’t approached me about this job, I’d still be collecting unemployment. Looks like I’m gonna go back to doing that for a long time unless this gets resolved real quick.”
“Not bloody likely,” Lara said. “Listen, let’s all get out of here. We’ve seen it for ourselves, and there’s nothing more we can do of value here. What we need now, more than anything else, is a plan of action.”
“I have some friends who are hunters,” Byers said. “I’ll call them as soon as I get back, and put them on this thing’s trail. If anyone is gonna stop this creature, it’ll be them.” He got to his feet again. “Lara…thank you. I don’t feel so bad anymore.”
Lara nodded her head. “You did what you had to do, Chris. Don’t let that torture you. Pierpont is only human. He’s not going to hunt you down. Whatever is out there can and will if you let it.”
“Pierpont is a very powerful man, Lara,” Byers warned.
“Leave Pierpont to me,” Lara said. “You just make sure you tell him you’re shutting down because I told you too. I can take care of him from there.” She turned to Michael. “Let’s go. And keep your pistol handy. We may need it.”
With a resolute nod, Michael chambered the next round, and they walked to the door and peered out. It was clear. Carefully avoiding looking at the remains of the massacred workers, it was a nerve-wracking walk back to the drive where the vehicles were parked.
“Remember,” Lara advised Byers, “make sure you tell those hunters what happened to those people. They may know what’s doing the killing, or give them some clues to follow.”
“Will do,” Byers said. “I’ll call you when this mess is finished, Lara, and we can have dinner or something.” He got into his car and revved the engine.
Lara and Michael got into her car as well, and drove off away from the forest.

* * * * * * * *

{Six p.m. the same day.}

She pulled up in front of a large building that extended several dozen stories up with a large sign at the top which blazed in bright blue letters, ‘J. Pierpont Enterprises.’ She stopped the car, and turned to Michael. “I promise not to tarry in here.”
“Lara, take me with you?” Michael asked, not wishing to just sit in the car.
She shook her head. “Sorry, this isn’t your territory. Just keep the car running. I’ll leave the keys so you can listen to the radio or something. They have some nice Beatles stations over here. You’ll be fine.” Before he had time to protest, she had closed the door and walked toward the large building.
“Stupid, rotten luck,” he cursed himself before settling down in the seat and listening to the radio station.

Lara stormed to the elevator and punched the button for the top floor. The speedy car came instantly, and the doors slid apart with a ding. She stepped inside and let them close, then looked for the control panel that should have been on the wall. It wasn’t there. “What is this?”
“Please state the floor to which you wish to travel,” said an androgynous voice from a speaker in the upper left hand corner.
“Top floor,” Lara replied, amazed at the level of technology present in the simple elevator.
“Number unrecognized,” the elevator intoned evenly, “please state a number between 0 and 60.”
“Very well then,” Lara murmured to herself. “Sixty,” she told the elevator.
“Floor number confirmed,” the elevator said cheerfully. Lara felt the sensation of movement as it sped upwards.
There was another small ding, and the doors slid apart to reveal a large lobby. A secretary typed hurriedly on a computer keyboard, and looked up as Lara approached. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but after business hours, it’s by appointment only.”
“Just buzz me in,” Lara ordered.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I don’t see any appointments down for this evening. If you would like to make one, I’m sure that Mr. Pierpont would be happy to accommodate a return phone call to-“
“I don’t have time for this,” Lara interrupted. “My name is Lara Croft. I am here to talk with Mr. Pierpont at the request of Christopher Byers, the head of the Colney Heath construction crew. So I will ask again: buzz me in.”
The secretary sat, stunned for a moment, then picked up the intercom. “I’ll ring you in, but if Mr. Pierpont asks me to, I’ll call security up here and have you removed.”
“Fine. Fair.”
The woman punched a button on her phone and waited for a moment. “Mr. Pierpont? You have a visitor.” A pause. “She says her name is Lara Croft, and she is here at the request of Mr. Byers from the construction site.” Another pause, then: “Yes sir, I’ll send her in right away.” The secretary hung up the phone and motioned Lara behind the desk. “Go on in, Ms. Croft. Sorry about the trouble.”
Lara gave her a dismissing shrug, then walked over to the door and opened it. She walked in slowly and shut the door behind her. Pierpont was sitting at his desk, a look of utter outrage on his face. “Good evening, Mr. Pierpont,” Lara greeted him, putting on her best smile.
“Lara Croft,” Pierpont seethed through clenched teeth. “You are the second to the last person I want to see right now. In fact, the only person I want to see less than you right now is that incompetent idiot, Byers.”
“Nice to see you as well,” she smiled, examining the room. It was a very broad room, all four walls meeting into corners in angles that were pleasing to the eye. A large picture window afforded Pierpont a birds eye view of the city when he wanted it. The computer in the corner had the typical Windows screen saver running on it, stars that went whooshing by; it was intended by the programmers no doubt to make you believe that you were at the helm of some fast space-faring vessel such as the USS Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon. The walls were painted a calm bluish gray colour, no doubt intended to relax the viewer. A private lavatory door stood open at the far end of the room. His desk was as large as his ego, or perhaps a bit smaller, and had a modicum of clutter on it. But Pierpont, for all his boisterousness, seemed to be able to claim organization and cleanliness as two of his personal skills. Probably pays his secretary to dust it twice a week, Lara thought to herself.
“You have the most guts of anyone I have ever met,” Pierpont snarled at her. “You come into a place that you have no business becoming a part of, start barking orders like you own the entire site, scare the wits out of my workers, inspire paranoia in my foreman, and then brainwash him into stopping the project.” He leaned in closer, and dropped his voice. “I don’t think you understand just who you are dealing with here.”
“No, Mr. Pierpont, I have no idea who or what I am dealing with here, and that is why I advised Byers to stop construction.”
“Don’t you realize that I can completely destroy you, your reputation, and your very life for what you did out there?” As if to drive this point home, Pierpont slammed a fist down on a small stack of papers. “Had you gone though proper legal channels, I would at least have some perception as to why you decided to act in this cavalier manner, but as it stands, you have given me no reason for your involvement here.”
“Mr. Pierpont, to be honest with you, I don’t give a damn about how much power you think you have. Nor do I give a damn how you throw your weight around. What I do care about is whatever it is out there that is killing your workers.”
“I am not stopping my work just because a damn fool wild dog is scaring people,” Pierpont said angrily.
“Well, then, you’ll just have to put on a hard hat and pick up a shovel, because there isn’t going to be anyone else out there to do the work.”
“You bitch!” Pierpont blurted. “Listen to me! I don’t care how hot you think you are out there, and I don’t care what you think you’ve found before! When you come into this office, you abide by my rules. And right now, I am this far from throwing you out, firing everyone on the construction team, and starting over again.” He held his forefinger and thumb about two centimeters apart, indicating his intense displeasure.
“Nice,” Lara sneered, pulling a Magnum from her holster and aiming it at him. “Mr. Byers said you might be a hassle, but I never expected you to be downright rude about this whole thing.”
Pierpont stared evenly at her, unwavering. “I was in the army for eleven years before I became what I am today, Miss Croft. If you think I’ve never seen a gun before, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Good thing,” Lara replied, “because I’m certain, then, that you understand that the dangerous part of the barrel is pointing at you. Stay away from Colney Heath until that thing out there has been killed.”
“What are you going to do if I don’t, Lara? Shoot me?” He blinked at her.
“I just may if you aren’t a good little boy.”
“Tell you what,” Pierpont said, looking her in the eyes, “you leave this office right now, allow me to do the job I have to do, and I’ll cut you in for 20% of the profits. I’ll tell you now, I stand to make a great deal of money off this project. Or better yet, allow me to make a rather gracious donation to the museum, or another favorite charity of your choosing. Sound good?”
“As a matter of fact, no, it sounds like bullshit.”
“Lara, you can’t stop me from completing this project on time.” Pierpont stood up, turned his back on her, and stared out the window at the streets below. “There are always others I can use. And there always will be.”
“If I find out that you have hired, bribed, threatened, or otherwise coerced anyone to go near those woods, Mr. Pierpont, then so help me, I’ll redecorate the walls in here with your brains,” she threatened. “Have I made myself clear? We’re putting your little project on hold. Just until this thing is caught.”
“Lara…you realize that I will have to do something about all this.” Lara ignored him and headed for the door, holstering her magnum as she went. “You have no authority here,” he shouted at her, standing up for emphasis, his voice booming forth from his diaphragm. “I assumed you were smarter than that.”
She paused as she opened the door and threw a slit-eyed glance at the man behind the desk. “Then I am more than happy to disappoint you, Mr. Pierpont.” She walked out and slammed the door behind her.

“No, that didn’t take long at all,” Mike said sarcastically as Lara got behind the wheel. “Do you know how many different stations over here play ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’?” He gave the radio an idle flick with his wrist, sending the tuner across several stations before it settled into static.
“No, fill me in,” Lara smiled, pulling out of the lot and into the traffic.
“Too many,” Mike muttered. He reached down next to him and pulled the lever, sending the seat springing into an upright position. “So what was that all about, anyway?”
“Making sure that nobody goes out there digging while Mr. Byers’ hunters do their thing,” Lara said.
“And he didn’t argue with you?” Mike asked.
“Oh, he argued,” Lara replied, “but in the end, I had a thirty-six centimeter long steel friend that made a few statements of its own.”
They were silent for a moment, and Lara switched on the headlights to illuminate the darkening roads.
“Lara… what will happen if this thing kills someone else?”
“I don’t think it’s a question of ‘if’ anymore,” Lara said.
“Huh? Why not?”
“I have a theory, Michael,” she told him. “I don’t want to make snap judgments, but if memory serves me, something like this has happened before.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Mike said. “Here in Britain?”
“No,” she said. “Not here. France. About two centuries ago. I’ll look it up again when we get home just to make absolutely sure, and then I’ll tell you more.”
The rest of the trip was made in quiet, but their minds were both racing, especially Lara’s as she played and replayed out potential scenarios and wrestled with what she was going to tell Byers the next day.

The jangle of the phone caused Lara to groan as she turned over, sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and squinted in the dark, looking for the handset. She found it on the third ring, and grappled with the tangled phone cord before bringing the mouthpiece to her ear. “Mmm…hello?”
“Lara? Oh good, you’re awake.”
“I wouldn’t place money on that, Chris” Lara replied. “Dear Lord, it’s five in the morning. What’s going on?”
“I’m over here at the coroner’s with an old friend of mine from medical school,” Byers said. “We have a corpse down here, and my friend is getting ready to do an autopsy. I thought you might be interested in seeing the results.”
“Chris, please, for the love of the queen, tell me you are kidding.”
“Look, I’m not exactly turned on by the idea, but I want to know what’s going on. I thought I’d offer you the same opportunity. If you don’t want to, then I’ll understand-“
“No, no, that’s OK. Can you wait a few minutes for Michael and me to get down there?”
“Sure. You know where it is, right? Two blocks north on McGalliard, remember?”
“Right. How about I just follow my nose?”
“That’s sick,” Byers reminded her. “I’ll see the two of you in a few minutes, right?”
“Yeah, right.” Lara hung up the phone and prodded Michael with her index finger. “Hey, wake up.”
Mike sneezed several times, then sat up. “You know, lack of sleep is a major contributor to headaches? What’s the trouble?”
“We’re going to an autopsy,” Lara replied, getting out of bed and throwing on her trademark pair of shorts and top.
“Oh, that would be trouble, alright,” Michael grumbled. “You are joking, right?”
“Not in the least,” Lara replied. “Mr. Byers has one of the corpses over at the coroner’s. They’re about ready to try and determine the cause of death.”
“I would have thought that would have been painfully obvious,” Mike argued.
“You seemed to have a marked interest in this the other day,” Lara said.
“Well, right now, I’d rather get some sleep rather than look at a mangled cadaver,” Mike replied. “I don’t suppose you understand that, but I’m not as curious as you are.”
“Then stay here in the dark house. Alone. I’m going over there.”
A brief glance around the darkened house made Mike’s mind up for him. “Um, point made. I’ll go with you.”

Lara and Michael entered the small white room through the door and shut it behind them. Byers looked up, along with the doctor and the photographer. “Ah, Lara! Glad you could make it.”
“Lara Croft?” the doctor asked, looking up from a report folder. Her light gray eyes seemed to burrow a hole in everything they looked at, and she matched looks with the explorer. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Christina Pinkus, the senior ME on duty here.” She turned to the photographer. “That’s Henry Aaronstone, our camera man for this job.” She pointed out a second doctor in medical scrubs. “Over there is my assistant, Dr. Haim Gregory.”
“Hullo,” Gregory murmured.
The camera man threw a terse wave at Lara and Michael, then proceeded to fiddle with his camera. “Ready over here, doctor.”
Pinkus leaned over the gurney table, and placed a stainless steel bucket under the outlet pipe. She poked the microphone a couple times. “Testing, testing 1,2,3.”
Mike looked at the lump under the sheet on the gurney. He tuned out the doctor as she sounded off the corpse’s name, the date and time, and everything else. He really didn’t want to be here, but Lara had insisted. For Mr. Byers, at least.
“This is Dr. Christina Pinkus, and Dr. Haim Gregory. The date is Wednesday, June 19th at 6:15 in the morning. Joining us are Mr. Chris Byers, Miss Lara Croft, and Mr.-” She paused and looked up at Michael.
“Michael Crisman,” Mike filled in.
“Michael Crisman,” Pinkus continued. “Now, we have here… ” she looked over at Gregory, who read off the tag on the gurney handle.
“Douglas Victor Preston,” Gregory spoke into the mike.
“I am now removing the covering,” Pinkus said. The plastic sheet that had been laid over the body crinkled in her gloved hands.
Mike swallowed hard, now thankful that Lara had denied his request for a bite to eat before they came over here. Byers looked away.
“We have here a Caucasian male, an adult, age about 25-30 years. Height is… well, I can’t give a precise height on this one, since it has been decapitated and is missing a leg, but I would guess around 1.6 meters tall. Weight approximately 85 to 90kg. Note this is very approximate. The state of the body leaves no other identifying markings. Eye color and hair color cannot be determined due to massive head trauma. Anterior wounds on the left leg, and upper arms. There are an undetermined number of large lacerations proceeding from the left anterior pectoral region at a one hundred and ninety degree angle downward through the sternum. They terminate at the right anterior abdominal region. This is a massive wound, perhaps a quarter of a meter long and a fifth of a meter wide.” She paused, ordered Gregory to sponge away some blood, then continued.
“It appears that the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor have been separated, and the body is greatly eviscerated. The sternal process has been split, and the rib cage smashed and exposed. Massive hemorrhaging in the aortal region, but difficult to tell before cleaning and exploration. The heart does not seem to be intact. Haim, please clean off the thoracic cavity.” She paused while the assistant scrubbed the indicated area. “The viscera that are clearly visible are the stomach and remnants of the small and large intestines.”
She turned her probing glances to the neck. “The neck of the victim shows signs of excessive trauma, a large amount of bruising, and possible spinal dislocation.”
This was getting too much for Michael. He pushed his way out the door and walked to the chairs in the hallway.
“Mr. Crisman has just left the room,” Pinkus noted, then continued to the tape. “The right leg has been bisected at the lower pelvic region, taking most of the genitalia with it. The left leg shows a distinct hemorrhaging of the femoral artery, the tibia and fibula are splintered, and the patella has been completely shattered indicating a great pressure was applied.”
The photographer moved about, shooting from various angles and positions, wherever best exposed the wound.
Byers looked at Lara, and motioned her to leave the room for a moment. She followed him, hearing the doctor continue with the procedure unperturbed.
“What’s wrong, Chris?”
“Lara, I want you to be level with me here,” Byers told her.
“Level? Do you think I’m hiding something from you?”
“No, but I would like to be sure. You have some idea about this, and I’m interested in hearing, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” Michael piped up from his seat. “All that chit-chat in there is interesting, but I was there when it happened, and I sure as hell can see what the aftermath was. Besides,” he added, “I can’t understand half of what they’re saying in there. I caught an occasional smattering of English, but the rest of it just went whoosh.” He whisked his hand several inches above his head to drive his point home.
Lara nodded. “Alright then. But remember, this is all pure speculation on my part. Have either of you heard of the Beast of Gevaudan?”
“Sounds like my mother-in-law,” Byers said.
“Cute,” Lara commented. “Well, I did some digging last night before I went to bed. And what I found out is quite interesting indeed.”
“Well, go on,” Michael prodded.
“Alright. Gevaudan was a small region in southeastern France. And, apparently, back in June of 1764, they had a bit of a problem.”
“I don’t like the way you said that,” Byers said.
“It’s nothing to take lightly,” Lara said. “The Beast of Gevaudan was some unknown predator that began a killing spree in July which did not end until June of 1767.”
“Dear God,” Byers gasped. “That’s the better part of three years.”
“The first victim was a young girl,” Lara continued. “Her heart was torn from her chest. The killings started up again in August. It was isolated victims at first, people roaming the roads at night. But then it got braver, to the point where the creature was attacking whole groups of armed men in broad daylight, and apparently living to tell about it.
“One day in October, a pair of hunters encountered it and shot it several times with rifles, when it limped off. They assumed it was dead. They were wrong. Within a day or so, the killings began again.”
“How do you know all this if it happened over 200 years ago?” Byers asked.
“The Paris Gazette wrote several articles on it,” Lara replied. “They claimed it was a werewolf. In 1765, the St. James Chronicle also published a report on the creature.”
“So that’s it?” Michael asked.
Lara shook her head. “Hardly. King Louis XV sent out a group of cavalry into the region. They saw the creature a number of times and shot it repeatedly, but it always seemed to escape. The killings stopped for a few days, the cavalry pulled out, and as soon as they were gone, the attacks started up again. Villages were abandoned after residents claimed they saw the beast looking in their windows during the night.
“It was finally killed by a hunter named Jean Chastel after he shot it with silver bullets. But it had killed over 60 residents of Gevaudan.”
Byers looked nonplused. “Come now, Lara. I mean, really…silver bullets? That just sounds like some old werewolf story from the 60s.”
“Chris, I didn’t say that this creature is the same type of creature that went wild in Gevaudan. But the parallels are extremely hard to miss. And the articles from the Gazette and the Chronicle are all on record. The number of eye-witness accounts are staggering. And after it was killed, the thing’s bloody carcass was dragged through almost every villa and city in France.”
“OK, OK,” Byres conceded, “I’m not disputing that there may have been some killings in France over 200 years ago. Hell, they may have even been caused by a wild animal. But I don’t see how you can link that with what happened to my men out in the forest.”
“Your little autopsy that you called us out here to see confirmed most of the evidence,” Lara replied. “Come on, Chris, you were in there! You had to have been listening, even if you weren’t looking at the body. I mean, the heart was missing, the body was decapitated, and those gigantic claw marks certainly didn’t come from any kitten. If you hadn’t been knocked out, you would have heard it up on the trailer trying to get in. Michael and I both shot at it, and I am certain that I hit it, but I don’t think I even hurt it. Probably just startled it enough that it ran away.”
Byers considered these points. “Alright…so what do you suggest we do?”
“We call in the RAF,” Mike offered. “Napalm the entire damn forest. Pierpont collects insurance money, the military claims it was an accident, pays compensation, the creature gets slow-roasted like a Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner, and everyone lives happily ever after.”
“Well, when you write the book, you can use that ending,” Byers said sarcastically, “but I’m afraid that our options with this aren’t quite that diverse. We cannot ask the British Royal Air Force to napalm the woods. They would lock us in straight jackets and toss us in a padded room. No, the military is out right now. I’ll get ahold of my hunter friends. They’ll be able to rat this thing out. One of them, Boggs, brought down a cougar single-handedly. Maybe then Pierpont won’t completely ruin my life.”

Michael and Lara sat at the coffee table in her den, sipping at cups of tea and trying to unwind. After the autopsy that morning, Michael hadn’t felt much like eating anything. Lara was hoping that the tea would at least calm him enough that he could get to sleep.
“You can’t be serious about this,” he told her. “I mean, Christ, look what it did to those men!”
“We don’t have any choice,” Lara replied. “Any sort of military action is out of the question, and Pierpont obviously is not going to blow up that forest area. What I want to know is where this thing lives. I doubt it just sleeps in a clearing somewhere.”
“Probably has a nice cute hole to live in,” Michael said dryly. “Some lair that it takes the remains of its victims back to and eats ‘em in peace. God, I think I’m gonna be sick…”
“Just drink the tea,” Lara said. “It’ll calm your nerves.” She fetched the remote control from where it lay on the table behind her. “Here, I’ll turn on the tele. Maybe there’s some interesting movie on.”
“You don’t get the Playboy channel over here, do you?” Michael asked.
Lara cast him a scowling, side-long glance and clicked on the television set.
“…latest reports on this horrible tragedy,” the newsman commented as his face appeared on the screen.
The view shifted over to the female anchor. “Thank you, Preston. Once again, for those of you just tuning in, there has been a terrible incident in the small town of Colney Heath.”
Michael and Lara’s eyes widened in shock.
“The identity of the victim of the attack has yet to be released to the public, but we do have the following details: the woman was in her thirties, and it appears that her throat was torn out with what authorities believe is some sort of sharp bladed instrument.”
Lara jumped as the telephone rang, then grabbed it off the cradle. She had a damn good idea of who it was before she even put it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Lara, it’s Chris. Turn on the tele.”
“We saw it,” Lara said. “The dead woman?”
“Do you think it was the creature?” Byers asked.
“What else could it have been?” Lara asked.
“But why would it attack the town?”
“You moved all the workers out of the forest. Guess where it’s nose took it for food next?”
“Dear God…Lara, what can I do? I can’t start the project up again, but we can’t just let this thing loose on the Heath.”
“Have you called your friends yet?” Lara asked.
“Yes, but Lara, it’s the middle of the damn night, they aren’t going to-“
“Call them back.”
“Wait a minute, you aren’t thinking-“
“Call them back now,” Lara ordered. “We can’t just sit here and let this happen. We can’t go to the police; no one would believe us. Our only option left is to go out there and hunt it down. Tonight.”
“Lara, I don’t exactly think this is the best idea…”
“You’ve got a better solution? A workable solution? Then I want to hear it right now, Chris. And if you don’t have one, then I’m going out there. With or without your help.”
“You’re not going out there alone,” Chris said. “Look, I’ll go with you. But I don’t know about the others. Let me have ten minutes, OK? I’ll call you back in ten minutes to tell you who is going out with me. If anyone will believe me, that is…” Byers hung up the phone and Michael stared at Lara.
“This isn’t a joke, is it?” he asked.
“Far from it,” Lara said, standing up and walking down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Michael called after her.
“To change clothes,” Lara said. “Gets cold out there in the woods at night.”
“Well,” Mike muttered when she was out of hearing range, “good thing I brought a sweater.”

Michael answered the phone. “Croft residence.”
“Is this Michael?” Byers asked.
“Yeah.”
“This is Byers.”
“I thought so. Wait a minute, I’ll get Lara.” He pressed the mute button and called her name. He heard a second phone pick up, then Lara’s voice: “Hello, Chris.”
“Lara, look, here’s the scoop. I have six, possibly seven, people willing to go out there. The other four thought I was fucking nuts. Not that I don’t blame them, because I think there is a good possibility that I am really insane for going along with this plan-“
“Good,” Lara interrupted. “Meet me out there at the site in twenty minutes with everyone else.”
“That’s pushing it, Lara, some of these guys live a bit further away.”
“Alright, half an hour. Michael and I are already on our way.”
“Lara…” Byers hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Well…for God’s sake, be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” Lara said, her hand dropping to her side holster reflexively, “we will.” She hung the phone on its cradle and walked down the hall into the den where Michael sat, hands in his jeans pockets. “Something troubling you, Michael?”
“Well, we’re only about to go hunt something that makes pseudo-roadkill out of everything that it attacks, has shown all the evidence of being resistant to most firearms, has the agility of a wild cat, the ferocity of a cornered wolf, and the strength of about four bears. But you’re right…that probably shouldn’t bother me in the least.”
She walked up to him, hefted him off the couch, and put her arms around him. “Yes, and it was wrong of me to volunteer your services. If you want to stay, then I’ll give you a call when it’s all over.”
“Right, like that would do my sanity any help,” he replied. “Worry about you from inside your house as opposed to out there with you. I’m not going with you because you volunteered me, Lara, I’m going because I care about you!” He put his arms around her as well and pulled her close.
They stood in that stance for a few moments, then Lara broke it. “Look, as soon as this is all over, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“Assuming it ends,” Michael groaned.
Lara tossed him the pistol from the coffee table and he caught it with his right hand. “We’ll make sure it does, Michael. Tonight.” I hope…
Michael nodded. “Let’s get this over with. The sooner I can get my imagination out of its overworked state, the better I’ll be.”

The car ground to a halt, the headlights clicked off, and Lara and Michael stepped from the vehicle. Byers ran up to them, thankful for the company. “Lara! Thank God. You’ve got to explain this to them. They all think I’m crazy ever since I told them about this thing.”
Lara nodded and moved past him. She stopped in front of the small semi-circle of armed men, all hunters of indeterminate skills and various sneering expressions. “Alright, who here doesn’t have the balls to track down a wild animal, shoot it, kill it, skin it, and possibly eat it?”
There were various murmurs among the group, but no one answered.
“That’s good. Because you are going to need all your balls in order to find this thing.”
“’Scuse me, ma’am,” one of them stepped forward.
Lara whirled and trained her flashlight on him. “Name?”
“Why the hell should I care?” the man asked her. “Give me one good reason why I should tell you?”
“So they know what to write on the tombstone. If you don’t tell me, I’ll be forced to tell them ‘Smart-mouth bastard.’ Now, be a little more cooperative, eh?”
“Name’s Boggs.”
“You think we’re not good at what we do?” someone else asked.
“To be perfectly honest,” Lara said, turning to the rest of them, “I don’t give a damn what you’ve done before. What you did in the past doesn’t matter to me in the least. What I care about is what you are going to do right now. Because this is the most dangerous animal you could ever hope to hunt.”
“I’ve hunted on the African veldt before,” one of them said. “I’ve killed lions before. A rhino once. But they’re nothing compared to a charging elephant. Name’s Bassinger. Remember that when you get asked who shot the fatal bullet.”
“I’ll try,” Lara sneered. “Now, I’ll level with you all. I have no idea what the hell it is we’re hunting.”
“She ain’t never seen the fucking thing,” one of the men stage-whispered to a companion.
“You, with the glasses,” Lara addressed the man, “name, please?”
“Corporal Eddington,” the man replied, stressing the ‘corporal.’
“Alright, corporal,” Lara said, “where in that last sentence did I say I had never seen the animal?”
“When you told us you didn’t know what it was,” Eddington replied with a smirk.
“First mistake,” Lara muttered. “I merely said I did not know what it was. But I can describe what it looks like. It is between two and three meters in length, can apparently run on all fours and walk erect. It can jump incredibly high, has large claws on all four feet, and makes a large roaring noise when it attacks.”
“Except for the jumping part, I’d think you were talking about a bear,” Eddington said. “You’re sure about the size too?”
“We were on the receiving end of one of its attacks,” Michael interjected. “We’re pretty damn sure.”
“Alright. This is some nice dirt you got, but I only need to know one thing: where that mother fucker is hiding.”
“Cut the macho bullshit,” Byers ordered. “Look, laugh and joke now. Because I guarantee you this: if it gets the drop on you, if you so much as startle it, it will be the last time you ever laugh, even if you do survive.”
This seemed to sober up the group a little.
“I don’t recall catching your name, lady,” Eddington said. “Like you said, might be important for the gravestone.”
Lara glanced at Byers. “You didn’t tell them?”
Byers shifted slightly. “Well, there didn’t seem to be time. I mean, you were in a big hurry and all…”
“You might want to be a little more polite,” Michael said. “This happens to be Lara Croft.”
Everyone but one man seemed to be taken aback. Eddington apologized at once. Boggs pulled his hat down over his face and murmured something that no one could understand.
The lone man looked her dead in the face. “Alright, Ms. Croft. Let’s get a few things straight here. I don’t give a flying fuck if you dig up the remains of dead people. I don’t care one iota if you came from a rich family, nor do I care if you are wealthy yourself. I don’t take orders from no woman. I follow my own nose. The name is Remington.” He pulled up the shotgun that he held and pointed it in her face. “The gun is a Remington. Need to know anything else, then tough shit.” He turned and stalked off into the woods. “Go ahead and talk, lady,” he called, not bothering to look back. “By the time you’re done, I’ll have this thing bagged and strapped to the hood of my truck.”
“You know, I never met a redneck who had to use a weapon with his own name just so he wouldn’t forget,” Michael whispered to Lara. “Good thing his parents didn’t name him ‘Bucktooth’ or there might have been some real problems.”
“Nice friends you have, Chris.” She looked at the remainder of the group. “Alright. Michael and I are going together. The rest of you can either search in pairs or go it alone like our ‘friend’ out there. I’d personally recommend starting out in a square pattern, maybe an eighty or ninety meter spread, and working our way inwards. Let’s get a move on. The safety of the town is in jeopardy until this animal is brought down.”
Byers approached Lara and Michael as the rest walked off, mostly in singles, but Lara did notice two of the men pair up. “Do you mind if I join you?” Byers asked.
“Of course not,” Lara replied. “The more the merrier, you know.”
“Got a gun?” Michael asked.
“Of course. What do you think I am, stupid?”
Lara clicked on a flashlight and began walking down the trail. “You coming?”
“What the hell is up with the light?” Byers snarled, walking after her. “What are you trying to do, attract the damn thing?”
“I’m certainly not going to wait for it to get impatient,” Lara said.
Michael tightened the grip on his gun and followed Lara closely. He had a feeling that sticking close to her was the only way he would walk away from this one alive.

“Can you believe that fucking bitch?” one of the men muttered. “Because I sure as hell can’t. I mean, where does she get off telling us how to hunt an animal?”
“Aw, calm down, Alcott,” the other man ordered. “This is Lara Croft here, not some bubble-headed bimbo from Anyplace, Essex.”
“I don’t care if she’s Queen Elizabeth herself, that tarty bint has no right to order me around. Why the hell don’t it bother you, Atkins?”
“Because,” Atkins replied, “that girl has spirit. I mean, did you see the way she just stood there and didn’t take that shit from Boggs? Not only didn’t she take it, she shoved it back in his face. It was beautiful.”
“Ain’t no woman in the world got a right to do that to a man,” Alcott argued. “I’d love to see her take the eye out of a leopard at fifty feet. I’d be willing to bet my life savings that she couldn’t do it.”
“Yeah, and you know what? She’d probably say, ‘What’s the point, just shoot the thing in the heart, and get it over with.’”
“I’m sorry, man, but women just don’t understand guns.”
“Think what you want, but I-“ Atkins stopped suddenly. “What was that?”
Both men stood deathly still. “I don’t hear anything,” Alcott said.
“I don’t either,” Atkins admitted after a moment. “But I could have sworn it was a scream.”
An ear-shattering howl echoed through the woods, bouncing off the trees, and seeming to come from everywhere at once.
Alcott found that he had begun to sweat. “What the fuck makes noise like that?” he hissed at Atkins.
“T-turn on the light,” Atkins said, shaking. He gripped his rifle tighter as Alcott moved for the flashlight on his belt. Atkins moved until his back was against a tree and pulled a smaller light from his pocket. “What happened to all the crickets? Why aren’t the damn crickets chirping?”
There was a thrashing sound from the bushes, and Alcott made a slightly muffled noise that sounded like a grunt.
Atkins, sweating more than ever, snapped his light on and pointed it in the direction of the bushes. Alcott was nowhere to be seen, though the sounds of a struggle could clearly be heard.
“Alcott?” Atkins asked, playing the light around him. “Talk to me…” Atkins froze as his light stopped upon the blood-covered jaws of the most terrifying creature he had ever laid eyes on. Reacting on his life-preservation instinct, Atkins raised the rifle and fired it at the creature. It looked at him for a moment, snarled a vicious, hair-raising snarl, then grabbed what was left of Alcott’s body in its massive jaws and sprinted away through the woods.
Atkins screamed as he fired the rifle in the direction of the creature. What the hell had happened? He was certain that he had hit it before. He was positive! It was point-blank range, he told himself. It got hurt, and went off to die somewhere. That was it, it was over.

Remington’s eyes darted around as he heard the screams, but they stopped naturally. They weren’t cut off, like a dying man’s. No, someone just got startled. The prey was still out there. He could feel it. The gunshots hadn’t been fatal. He refused to believe that. Lara Croft, if that was who she really was, needed to be shown that men could handle shotguns just as well as she could. Damn feminists. Always touting women power. Well, tonight, there would be some good-old-fashioned rescuing by males. Maybe they’d make a video game out of this some day.

Boggs ignored the screams. As long as they weren’t his, that didn’t concern him. The rest of those guys were too fucking strung out. This was a damn panther. A muscular, limber panther. Nothing else. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

“Fuck,” Atkins swore as he looked around. His sense of direction had failed in his panic, and he began to get the full sensation of being lost. “God damn it…” The hoot of a nearby owl frightened him, and he charged off in a random direction, running until he tripped on a tree root and fell…only the ground never seemed to come. He tumbled down the side of an embankment, arms flailing, dropping his rifle, until he slammed to the ground in a gigantic puddle of water.
“Damn it,” he sputtered, getting to his feet. “This isn’t my fucking day.” Now where the hell am I, he wondered to himself. A sharp pain in his ankle stabbed into his consciousness. He found walking to be almost impossible, so he sat down for the moment to collect his thoughts. He didn’t notice that all the sounds of the forest at night had ceased to exist.
“Who the hell digs a fucking ravine in the middle of the woods, that’s what I want to know.” Atkins continued to complain to himself, not hearing the soft pattering of the four feet that touched the ground gently, not hearing the slight sniffing sounds as the nose poked into the air, attempting to find his scent on the wind.
He froze suddenly, aware of the sound of approaching footfalls. “Boggs? Is that you?” The steps came closer. “Lara? I’m warning you, stay away! I’m armed and dangerous!” Like hell, his mind told him. Run, you stupid bastard. But his leg protested, and he sank to the dirt. The footsteps continued, and he seemed to sense the presence before him. Hoping to scare it away, he clicked on his light and pointed it at the source of the noise.
A wolf was illuminated in the glow. Timidly, it backed away.
“Go on,” Atkins called, picking up a rock and tossing it at the wolf, “get lost! Go on, get out of here!”
The wolf snarled and bristled its fangs at him.
“Come on, mother fucker!” Atkins roared. “Come on, I dare ya. I fucking double dare ya! I triple dog dare ya, you dumb mutt!”
Without warning, the wolf lowered its tail between its legs and dashed off into the night.
“Yeah, don’t fuck with me!” Atkins called after it.
But the human was the least of the wolf’s worries at the moment. The large thing that had inspired fear was right behind it, and very angry, judging from the sounds it was making. And though the wolf had never seen such a creature before, it was not something it wanted to meet up close.
“Yeah, run, you chickenshit arse!” Atkins jibbed. “Come back here again and I’ll rip your fucking balls off.”
The delicate touch of a snout from behind caused him to jerk his head around in time to see the large beast slam its head into his back, sending him sprawling across the ravine. Atkins slowly got to a crawling position, and started to move away from the large animal, whimpering and crying. “Come on, man, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. I’ve got a wife, kids, I’ve got-AAAAWWWW!!!” Atkins screamed in pain as the creature snagged his leg, the one with the broken ankle, in its jaws, and lifted him off the ground. With a massive shake of the head, the beast tore Atkins’ leg off at the knee, sending the large man flying across the clearing. The last thing Atkins saw before the darkness overtook him was the tree looming ahead.
Atkins slammed into the large Douglas Fir entirely too quickly. His head burst in a gruesome explosion of blood and brain matter, scattering gore over the trunk, the leaves on the ground, the small stream of water, and the creature which stood, gnawing on what was left of Atkins’ lower leg. It dropped the small piece that was between its jaws, bent to the ground, scooped up an eyeball with its tongue, and moved off silently in search of the other prey that awaited it.

Michael’s head shot up. “Jesus Christ, did you hear that scream?”
“It’s out there,” Lara nodded.
“This is so fucking crazy,” Byers whimpered. “I mean, these woods are huge! We could search all night and never find the thing.”
“I don’t think that will be the problem,” Lara said. “I think it will come to us.”
There was a snap of twigs behind them, and Michael whirled with his pistol drawn. “Who’s there?”
“Calm down, everyone. It’s just me.”
“Remington?” Byers asked.
“That’s right. Did anyone else hear that scream?”
“Sorry to say that I did,” Byers said. “Could anyone tell who it was?”
There was a soft squishing sound as Remington walked towards them. “Ah, shit,” he muttered. “Lara, had me the torch, would ya? I think I stepped in something.”
Lara passed the flashlight over to him, and he shone it at the ground.
Michael threw up. Remington was standing in the center of a large pile of intestines. The body they had come from was a few feet away.
“That was Eddington,” Byers said. “I’d know that pair of spectacles anywhere.”
Remington bent to the ground, examining the steaming pile of entrails and the blood around it. “These are way too fresh. I’d be willing to bet that it’s not too far from here.”
“Michael,” Lara ordered, “climb that tree over there and stay in it.”
“Why?”
“It’s still here.”
“Oh shit…” Michael felt his knees get weak as he stumbled to the tree and started to climb.
Remington chambered a round in his shotgun. “Alright, you little shit…come out, come out wherever you are.”

The forest was deadly silent in Boggs’ ears. The moon overhead shown down soft enough to illuminate the path, yet bright enough that the shadows were just long enough to be creepy. Boggs’ uncanny sense of direction had kept him from getting lost as he stalked through the dark. From the sounds he had heard, it had already killed at least two people. And that, Boggs vowed to himself, was how it was going to stay. Eyes scanning the path ahead of him, he continued to creep along at a snails pace. One thing was for sure: this stuff played with your head. And it was driving Boggs up the wall currently. The other thing that worried him were the clouds. They weren’t any normal, white puffy clouds; no, those were rain clouds. And the small growls he kept hearing were definitely thunder. Unless this thing got found within the hour, he got the feeling that he was going to be a whole lot wetter. And a whole lot more pissed off. He stumbled on a tree root and kicked it in anger, his big boot making a low slapping sound. “That ain’t no god damn tree limb,” Boggs muttered, and bent to examine it. It was the lower half of a human leg, or rather what was left of it. He lifted it up curiously, and saw the blood run out of the mangled stump in rivers, covering his hand. It was still warm. This was not good. Suddenly sickened by the thought, Boggs dropped the stump to the ground and wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers.
The sounds of the forest died around him, and he looked around before finally spotting a massive tree off to the side of the path. He hurried over to it and crouched, peeking over the top.
Boggs’ bladder emptied itself as an enormous thing stalked by. It had to have been at least two meters long, the blood on the snout clearly visible. Its nose worked furiously, searching for a scent. It paused at the leg, sniffed the ground near it, then, to Boggs’ horror, it rose up on its hind feet and tromped away through the clearing on down the path. Even after it was gone, the same thought hammered through his brain. It walked on two legs.
He stayed in that position for an awfully long time, frozen in terror, until the sounds of the night returned, and he relaxed slightly. He pulled his rifle up and looked through the scope down the trail, but it was no good. There was too much haze in the air, and he couldn’t see the creature anyway. He heaved a huge sigh of relief, and leaned up against the tree. Pulling a cigarette out of his pocket, he flicked his lighter on and tried to light it. The wind blew it out, and he had to click the lighter again several times before he finally got the stick lit. He raised it to his lips and took a deep pull, feeling his nerves calming already. So what if it caused cancer? It was a damn good way to wind down. He took another tug and held it in as long as he could before exhaling it again.

“What the hell is that?” Remington asked, peering out into the light mist at the small red dot in the dark.
“What is what?” Lara asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“Little orange light,” Remington replied tersely. “I’m gonna go check it out. I just hope it’s not an eye.” He walked away from Lara, Michael, and Byers towards the source of the light.
He stopped after a few yards. There wasn’t anyone there except for Boggs. And the stupid bastard was smoking. Dumb ass was gonna bring the thing over here or cause a forest fire. He started to move towards him to tell him, then stopped. Something just didn’t feel right. He dove into the bushes as the thing stomped back up the path towards Boggs. And he couldn’t shout. That would only get the creature’s attention. Laying there virtually helpless, Remington watched in stunned silence as Boggs dropped the cigarette and crushed it with his boot. The creature stopped, then turned and walked away.
Remington couldn’t believe it. Boggs was out in the open, and nothing happened. He pulled himself from the bushes and trotted down the trail, silently telling Boggs to count his lucky stars.
With a massive roar, the enormous creature exploded from the foliage at Boggs’ right, and its teeth clamped firmly around his wrist. Boggs screamed and tried to bring his rifle around. The creature slapped the gun out of his hand with its nose, snapping his lower arm. Boggs howled in pain, then viciously kicked at the creature with his steel-toed boot. The creature gave a grunt as his boot sank into the soft flesh, and it released its grip on Boggs. It backed away slowly, apparently unable to ascertain what to do about this situation.
Boggs unsheathed a massive combat knife with his functional left hand and waved it menacingly. “Don’t come near me again, you mother fucker, or you go home missing an eye.”
Remington shouldered his shotgun, holding the weight back, and dropped to one knee. He would get one shot, two at the most, before the creature reacted and attacked him. This would have to count.
“Try it again, mother fucker!” Boggs threatened the creature. He swiped the knife at it, and it backed up. “Yeah, and there’s plenty more where that came from.”
The creature crouched low and suddenly hurled itself at Boggs, slamming into him with its full weight. Boggs went sprawling to the ground, the creature still on top of him. Shouting out some war cry, Boggs slammed the knife into the creature’s chest and felt the blade sink up to the hilt. He pulled it out, expecting to feel blood splashing over his torso, but he didn’t.
With a growl, the animal sprang off Boggs and backed away.
“Yeah, I hurt you, didn’t I?” Boggs walked over to get his gun, and was knocked to the ground again as it charged at him. It crashed into him, throwing him across the clearing. The knife scattered away from him into the bushes.
Remington aimed again. Damn thing was moving too fast for a good shot. It was playing with Boggs, enjoying his fear. Damn animals. His hand touched the trigger, and there was a ferocious kick from the shotgun and a tremendous roar. Remington silently cursed as the shot went wide.
The creature looked at Remington now, and headed at him, ignoring Boggs.
Remington held his position and pressed the trigger down again. There was another massive roar of the shotgun and Remington watched as the rounds slammed into the beast’s head…and bounced off again, leaving a large gouge and the clearly visible white of an incredibly tough skull.
Lara, Michael, and Byers burst into the clearing at the sounds of the gunshots just in time to see the creature round on Boggs and savagely gouge out his chest with its enormous front claws.
Boggs gurgled as blood fountained in a violent eruption from both his chest and mouth, then crumpled to the ground.
Remington chambered another pair of rounds in the shotgun and opened fire again, this time tearing into the creature’s side. It roared in pain or annoyance, it was impossible to tell which, and turned to face the hunter.
Lara brought her twin magnums up and emptied round after round into the creature’s side. Michael did the same with his pistol. Byers stood there, completely stunned.
The creature seemed to shrug off the hits and lept at Remington, who slammed the butt of his shotgun into its head. There was a loud snap as the end of his shotgun broke off and fell to the ground. It snapped its teeth around Remington’s neck and sprang away, down the path, dragging the helpless man with it.
“Follow it!” Lara yelled, sprinting after the creature, hearing the gruesome noises it made, dragging the huge man behind it.
Michael dropped from the tree and chased after Lara, but Byers stood there in complete shock, unable to cope with what he had just seen. The night closed in on him, and pulled out his radio and hit the transmit button, speaking rapidly into the unit before clipping it to his belt and sitting down on the soft, wet ground and putting his face in his hands.

“I can’t chase this thing much longer,” Michael called to Lara. Already his lungs were complaining, and his heart was racing faster than he had ever felt it do so before. But he kept up his pace. Lara might depend on him.
Lara, far from being exhausted, was driving full-steam ahead, legs hammering the ground and carrying her after the beast, who was unable to reach full speed due to the struggling Remington in its jaws. Then, suddenly, it wrenched its head to the side, dropped the body it was carrying, and took off away from them about twice as fast as it had run before. As soon as it was free of the weight of Remington, the animal increased its pace and darted out of sight.
She stopped the chase, firing a couple rounds at the creature as it vanished into the dark, and hurried over to the fallen Remington. His breathing was coming in ragged gasps. His pants and shirt had been torn to shreds by the harsh terrain and the speed of the creature. Dark crimson flowed over his chest, soaking into what was left of the shirt, and each time he inhaled, Lara thought she heard a soft hiss of air, almost like an echo.
Michael bent his head to the man’s chest. “Punctured lung, I think.” He backed up as Remington tried to pull himself into a sitting position. “Hey, don’t move. Help is on the way.” Michael wasn’t sure if this was the case or not, but he certainly did not want the man to give up. Not just yet.
Lara slipped her belt off her waist and tightened it around the man’s horribly gashed leg, all the time knowing that the tourniquet was a fairly worthless gesture; he had lost too much blood already.
Remington opened his eyes, and a small trickle of blood rolled down the corner of his mouth. “Aw, Christ…” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m…really fucked up…aren’t I?”
“No, you’re fine,” Michael said. “You’ll be just fine. The doctors are on the way.”
Lara eased the man to the ground. “Just stay quiet until they get here.”
“You…you don’t need to…” The rest of what he said was lost in an explosive cough that sprayed blood into the bushes nearby. “You don’t need to tell me…lie to me…” He looked into Lara’s eyes. “I…can tell when people…lie. Just tell me…tell me that I’m really fucked.” Another ragged breath. “That way…I won’t feel so god-damn bad about…dying.” He choked on the last word.
“In that case,” Lara said softly, understanding the man better than she had before, “you look like hell.”
He raised his arm, surprisingly fast, and grabbed her wrist with it. It must have taken his last bit of energy, because the moment his hand tightened on hers, his arm went limp. “I’m…sorry…’bout befor