Wendigo Road by Goodman Doug

Author:Goodman, Doug [Goodman, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2018-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Finding more backpacks was easy in the resort town. Troy and Ghost came back with dozens of packs. Deciding what to carry was different. Of course, all the kids wanted to carry their own pack. The soldiers decided that was a bad idea, though. The kids would tire of their packs quickly, and then they would be forced to discard the packs in the wilderness, which would be the equivalent of leaving a bread crumb trail for the wendigos to find them. All of Recon Team, plus Oran, Kai, and the five kids over fifteen would carry packs. The packs would be full almost entirely of cherries and water, though other high-value items such as tarps and knives would be taken as well.

“It’s gonna take more than cherries to get us across those mountains,” Teller said to Oran when they had some privacy.

“You are all soldiers, are you not? Part of ‘Recon Team?’ I assume you had to live off the land for days at a time.”

“Sure, seven of us, but not with twenty kids in tow. Kids eat a lot, if you haven’t noticed.”

“The Blackfeet have hunted here for hundreds of years. I am not worried. Monsters aren’t the only creatures here. There are squirrels, turkeys, deer, and elk in these woods, and trout in the lakes and rivers. Each night, two of us will go out to hunt, and we will leave traps.”

The first day on foot, they made good time. The children were excited and happy to camp under the stars. All morning they walked through rolling plains of high grass. When a wendigo appeared on the edge of the mountains south of them, the caravan squatted low in the grass so as not to be seen.

The wendigo was taller than the trees, and he had a gigantic crown of horns on his gray skull. The giant weaved back and forth at the edge of the mountain for over an hour before returning back to the Mission Mountains.

They stopped outside of the small town of Ferndale while Troy and Molotov cleared it. When the two gave the all clear, the soldiers scavenged the grocery store for supplies, but almost everything had been pillaged years ago. Only ash and leaves were left on the grocery store shelves. Along the side of a garage, somebody had long ago put up the black relief of a walking bear. For Oran, it was a subtle reminder that they were entering bear country, and that meant something totally different than it did when people still lived in Ferndale. There was no such thing as encroachment anymore. The land had returned to the animals. They were in the bear’s territory, not the other way around, and they should be mindful of that.

Kai shot and killed a black-and-tan cat. Her arrow impaled the feline through the heart, killing it instantly. Oran showed the two children, Blood-Clot Boy and Old Woman, how to respectfully gut and clean the cat’s body for consumption, thanking the cat for its nourishment.

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