Project Aspire

Chapter 7 - Eric (Written by Jason Kucharik)

 

All I could think of was knocking the shit out of Cole.  I secured my footing, reached for higher hold and continued to pull myself up the slippery rock wall.  I had to get me focus straight seeing as that was the third time that I almost dropped back down to the forest floor.  Last thing I needed was to break my legs.  The wall was only forty feet high, but the mossy growth and humid environment made it exceedingly difficult to climb.  Letting my anger feed my determination and movement, I finally pulled myself up and over the edge of the last stone formation.  I rolled over to my back and took a minute to catch my breath and slow my heart rate.

As my breathing calmed, the lack of noise in the forest forced its way to the forefront of my mind.  I sat up, looked around, and down the cliff; then holding my breath listened for a few seconds.  Nothing.  No bugs, no branches moving in the wind or distant animal noises, nothing at all.  Since the sun set, the dark void of the forest had been alive with the hum of bugs and other nocturnal creatures despite the fact that I didn't see any.  But now there was nothing.  Like someone flipped a switch and turned everything off or pressed mute on a control panel somewhere.  The lack of noise made me extremely uneasy.

Regardless, it didn't change the fact that I had to figure out what the hell was going on with Cole.  I pushed myself up off the mossy ground and made my way north along the cliff.  Taking advantage of everything I learned in sniper school, I crept to the edge of the precipice and peered down at Cole, dug in against the cliff.  His head slowly nodded down to his chest before abruptly snapping back up into position as he continued to stare intently out into the forest.  It happened again, and again.  Judging from the blood trail I followed from our camp he was injured.  He must have taken pain killers; mixed with exhaustion, he'd probably pass out any second.          

He didn't.

I was confident that I could use nanowire from my bag to descend unnoticed and grab him from above, but I wasn't looking for a fight.  I'd rather disarm him when he was unconscious.  I don't know what made him snap, but he shot down my goddamn drone, one of the most beneficial pieces of tech I had with me.  I was just trying to get eyes on him.

I stayed concealed, waiting for Cole to doze off or move.  After twenty mins, the sound of the forest started to fill my ears again.  The bugs, random rustling in the trees, animal noise, all of it out of the blue.  It wasn't our presence or lack of movement that was causing the creatures to act this way, something else was in the darkness.  I thought back to what I had seen at our camp.  Cole's blood, his tracks, but there was something else pressed into the soft muddy ground as well.  Another track, wide and flat, with four toes towards the front and a space to rear before what looked like another toe. There was no indentation in the center of the print, which suggested that whatever made it, arched its foot while moving. For greater traction maybe?  I was confident that something else was stalking us in the darkness; something that was known to the rest of the forest.  Something that made the whole forest go quiet when it was around.  

An hour and a half later, Cole got up and started to move back towards the camp.  Maybe he had snapped out of whatever psychosis had overcome him, or maybe he was going on the offensive, trying to hunt me down.  Staying hidden was my best bet, as he'd either pass out, fall asleep or set his rifle down at some point; that's when I'd strike.

I let Cole get out of sight and a good distance ahead of me before following behind.  Tracking him in this terrain was easy enough that I didn't have to follow too closely.  Halfway back to the camp Cole’s movement sped up.

Picking up my pace, I made it back to the edge of the camp; it was destroyed.  The tents, the gear thrown all over the place.  I couldn't see Cole even though his tracks led into the camp, but this didn't look like his doing.  Just as I was about to move from cover and investigate further, the forest went silent again.  I scoured the area with my eyes, running over every little detail I could see in the dark.  There was movement, on the trees around the camp, followed by a soft high pitched whistle which echoed throughout the forest.  Something was crawling down the trunks of the trees very slowly.