Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 40

“What are we going to do with it? It’s so big!” said Hayden looking at the thing that lay before them.

“The vampires must have really had fun coming up with this thing! It has feathers and a beak like a bird and the body of a bear!” Willow scowled at it, rubbing her legs where it had fallen on her. They were sore but unhurt, unlike her pride. She was the only girl on the team, and she kept getting hurt. Xun couldn’t help but smile at her grumbling.

“I wonder what it tastes like,” he murmured.

“Tastes like! Are you crazy?” shouted Willow.

“Shhh!” hushed Hayden looking around.

Xun paused, fear washing over him as he suddenly realized he had let his guard completely down. He immediately began scanning the forest and rock wall behind him. He didn’t see anything, but he knew there was a dead werewolf and they didn’t travel alone.

Hayden got another arrow ready on his bow, and Willow pulled her sword out of the side of the dead monster. The area was quiet. It took Xun a full minute to realize he could no longer hear the dripping blood, and he quickly made his way back to the sight of the werewolf. Scowling at himself, he made a promise not to let his guard down like that again.

Just like before, when the werewolf had changed back into a man, this wolf had returned to his original form as well, however, he didn’t seem to see them as they drew closer to him.

“Jack, where are you? Why am I so cold? What happened to my fur? Am I human again?” his words were slurred but recognizable.

“That thing’s going to kill us, Jack! We need to run! Let’s just hunt those tasty elk instead of more people. I’m tired of hunting people, Jack.” He seemed to look around, but even though they were there, right in front of him, he didn’t see them.

“We need to find a place to hide, Jack. Those bloodsuckers will find us and change us again. It hurt so bad, Jack. This isn’t too bad. I can handle this pain…” his voice faded as he began to wither.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he scrambled up the jumbled mess, slipping and sliding, and causing several miniature rock slides of his own. Pulling himself to the top, he could see the second werewolf body. It had already returned to its human form and had withered to a husk as well. Listening to the other two follow him, he turned to look over the surrounding area.

“Why are there so many monsters all of a sudden?” asked Hayden quietly.

“Maybe the vampires are getting tired of the fleas,” Willow said as she stood next to them.

The herd of elk was gone. There was a huge swath of carnage, where the werewolves had killed hundreds of them, but never stopped to eat. The bird/bear monster must have snuck up on them, and killed them too quickly for them to make a noise. Xun couldn’t believe his eyes. How had he not heard the noise of so much death?

“If any is salvageable, we need to get down there before the scavengers get here.”

They nodded and followed him down the steep slope.

“If there aren’t any bite marks, we should be able to salvage the carcass. If there are bite marks, try to save the hide at least. Gut the ones that we can save, and we’ll start hauling them back as soon as possible. Maybe we can float them back on a raft or something.”

Willow looked at him, “Didn’t the leaders give you a talking thing? Maybe you could get one of the fishing boats to come up and haul them back for us?”

He nodded. That was a good idea. He climbed back up to the top of the rock slide, surprised at how much harder it was from this side. At least that explained why the elk hadn’t climbed it.

“This is Xun, can you hear me?” Looking at the box for a moment, not hearing anything, he remembered to let go of the buŧŧon.

“..continue.” He had missed the first part of their message.

“I need a big boat to head north of the rock slide. We have a large elk herd that was killed, and we’re trying to salvage what we can.” He let go of the buŧŧon immediately.

“The message will be relayed, please have something where the boat captain can see the location to stop.”

Nodding, he pushed the buŧŧon again, “Okay.” It was very weird to be talking to someone he couldn’t see. Putting the box thing back into his bag, he slid back down to help. Once he reached the bottom, he decided that if he was going to salvage his clothes, he needed to clean them off. Glancing at the others, to make sure they knew where he was, he headed to the water to scrub out as much of the blood as possible. After a bit, he was soaked to the bone, but clean.

Hayden had made another travois to haul the good meat to the shore, so Xun helped load the meat, then unload it as Willow examined each one and gutted them. It was surprising the number of elk that were dead from a blow to the head and didn’t have a single bite mark on them. The ones that did have bite marks, the hides weren’t worth saving. Claw marks had them torn to shreds, leaving very little to harvest.

The boat arrived after they had hauled about 40 carcasses to the shore. The workers on board were surprised to see all of the dead elk, waiting to be loaded. By the time they had gotten all of the elk they could on board the ship, it was getting very late. The sun was just peeking over the horizon.

It didn’t take them long to climb on board when they heard wolf howls in the distance.