The Vikings' Secret by Benjamin Sobieck

Author:Benjamin Sobieck [Sobieck, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

17.

The path to the Wendigo is easy to follow. In The Pit, anything that doesn’t resemble the grayish beige of the rocks sticks out like a road flare. The bright red of the creature’s blood paints a map past the monoliths and back to the corpse we came across earlier.

I can see the beast splayed out on the ground several yards ahead of me in a clearing. It doesn’t look like it’s moving, but even so I firm up my grip on the gig.

I hope that thing still has my knife, or it owes me some money.

Even at a distance, the Wendigo looks huge. My feet move heel-toe, heel-toe in the dirt, and I stalk the creature from between boulders as if it were prey. But something strange happens the closer I get to it. The creature starts to look more and more human. The head. The hands. The way the body lays. In fact, by the time I’m close enough to count the fingers and toes, I’m convinced it’s not a mythical monster at all.

This is a person.

Squatting down within a shadow several yards away, I study the body, watching for any sign of movement. I’m not expecting any, but I can’t be too careful. After waiting a few minutes, I pick up a small rock and hurl it at the body. No movement. I toss another one to be sure. Still dead.

Despite the revelation, I’m hesitant to move into the clearing. Those psychos with the rifles are still out there, and I’d be completely exposed. But I’m not sure Biyu and I will make it out alive without that knife. It’s worth the risk. I’ll need to move fast.

Still crouching down, I hustle it out to the body. Sure enough, there’s the knife, no worse for wear. I stuff it into its sheath at my hip and take a look at the body.

It’s clear to me now why they say a Wendigo guards The Pit. The legends don’t mean a literal monster. They mean the monster people turn into once they’re down here, going mad and losing their humanity along their way to a slow death.

Along the path of my own pink slip here in The Pit, my mind pictured a monster charging into camp, trying to take my water and food. We both reverted to the tunnel vision that only life-or-death situations like this can bring about. And in that moment, we missed a chance to salvage what’s left of ourselves down here. Instead of offering him the water and food he so desperately needed, our first reaction was to kill him, just as he sought to kill us with his last morsel of energy for the chance at a swallow of water or a bite of food.

No doubt the smell of the cooked snake lured him in, and his body couldn’t see fit to do anything but come and take it. Neither of us is to blame. It’s this place. It’s The Pit.

I’m reminded again of Desert Storm and “the thirst” in that bunker.

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