Hushed whispers?
As Jesse walked something trailed softly across his cheeks. He swatted and found his head covered with tentacles, fingers...something sliding over his face and ears. He hobbled quickly through the fluttering vines that descended from trees above. “Jesus!” Jesse tried to compose himself and shake the feeling of spiderwebs and vines as his heart began to pummel his chest. Light faded to twilight as he forged ahead, able to see mere feet in front of him.
A monumental crack of thunder arrived with a terrific flash of lighting that brightly illuminated the forest, momentarily blinding Jesse, but not before...
“What was that?” he asked.
What? Did you see something?
“You know I did, just over there. What the hell was it? Something big and white!”
Jesse tried to decide if he was now hallucinating. He felt sure that the lightning illuminated something odd in the forest, no more than sixty yards from him, high up the left slope of the ravine. Something that seemed out of place. “I know I saw something there,” he said aloud in an effort to reassure himself. In the chill of darkness he knew he’d never make it out of the woods that night. His only hope was to find shelter and make it until morning. He believed that what he thought he had seen might just be his ticket out.
***
The ravenous coyote pressed his black nose to the leaf and flared his nostrils as he inhaled the intoxicating scent of fresh blood. His three pack mates yelped wildly around him. Blood, not carrion, not yet. Only fresh blood, but where there was blood there was a wound, and where there was wound there was chase and then dinner. He knew that this was no woodchuck. It would be a big dinner. A feast.
The alpha male lifted his head from the ground and craned his neck to the skies. A prehistoric ghostly howl ascended from his soul to the heavens, inciting his lieutenants to moan a harmonious alarm to any nearby creatures in the darkening forest, especially to the one bleeding. To that injured soul it was a summons to surrender and give himself back to the mountain, to the soil.
They each took a turn sniffing the leaf, imprinting the scent of the target as they scampered and paced around the blood, riling each other up as surely as a quarterback boisterously slams a teammate’s shoulder pads before attacking an opposing defense.
There was no denying who had earned the alpha male role in this pack. His bushy tail was as thick as a man’s arm and resembled a furry club when held horizontal to the ground if he felt threatened or challenged. His eyes, the iris an ancient amber the shade of wet, Egyptian sand, encircled deathly black pupils the size of forest acorns. When challenged, he took on a wild appearance. He seemed able to command every mane hair to stand erect, looking like an agitated porcupine as he spread his ears, narrowed his menacing eyes, and opened his mouth to flash his most terrifying weapons. By simply opening his mouth and snarling, he invoked more fear than his counterparts did when they snapped their jaws loudly. His lower incisors, a single spear on each side of his mouth, rose like two pillars framing the entrance to hell. The razor-sharp crescent moons curved up to meet the upper incisors on each side that served as enamel nails sealing the doorframe. In preparation for battle, saliva dripped from his fangs and suspended in a thread that made him seem even more menacing, if that was possible. His scowl cinched back his upper lip, allowing a serrated row of teeth to protrude that filled the gap between his upper incisors. He was not to be tested.
The alpha male easily picked up the trail of blood that had spilled and spattered on the occasional leaf in an unwavering line leading down the slope. He trotted in that direction as quickly as he could while remaining certain of the trail. The pack followed closely, anticipating a successful hunt.
Three hundred yards ahead, Ozzie rested against a yellow poplar. The sun hung low in the sky and light began to wane sharply, owing in part to the ominous clouds that obscured the sun and hovered gloomily over Ozzie. He was utterly exhausted after trekking miles in the overgrown forest, up, down, over and around, all the while being chased. Now his injured body required rest as much as water. But those were not the thoughts on his mind. As he leaned against the tree, unable to fully comprehend the meaning of approaching coyotes that serenaded his subconscious, his mind focused on Isabella. There she was, with Ozzie, strolling together in the woods, eating wild blueberries, finding mushrooms, presenting her warm and loving shoulder for Ozzie to rest against. That’s where Ozzie was at that moment. In his mind he wasn’t against a tree; rather, he was against the warmth of his mother’s love and protection.
The alpha male was getting close enough to allow a celebratory yelp that sent the others into a mood of maniacal celebration. He had detected a new smell a few moments before. Smoke. Burning. It was of no concern to him as it was beyond his target, and was a smell he detected from time to time. Ozzie, too, had picked up on the smell of smoke and burning and he was blindly heading toward it. Now he was close, very close he felt, but he could go no farther tonight. He would rest there, against his mother, and let the night rejuvenate him.
The alpha male almost skidded to a stop atop a hill crest. In the entirety of the forest, with all its trees, creatures, leaves, and pine cones, he zeroed in on a singular target, bleeding and resting against a tree forty yards in front of him. A tree close to the stream that they had been following before they had stumbled upon the blood trail. There he was, down, weak and theirs for the taking. The pack charged and communicated with each other with a primordial telephony that instructed them to spread out, circle the tree and enclose the target.
Ozzie looked up the slope. His gaze, lost in a daydream of Isabella’s face, dissolved into the forest floor as her eyes gave way to two beasts charging his way. Beasts with jaws wide open, teeth flashing and narrow, penetrating predatory eyes. Adrenaline jolted Ozzie to his feet. He stood, paralyzed; only his head seemed able to move as he looked left, then right, as a circle of beasts danced around him as surely as the moon orbits the earth. They moved in a blur, making the circle seem impenetrable.
A flash of lightning lit up the forest and bounced off the coyote’s eyes and reflected their crazed looks to Ozzie. Thunder crashed loudly and shook the forest. The fear Ozzie hoped had receded for the night reemerged as the circle of fur moved faster and came ever closer, somehow moving concentrically and closing in. Ozzie spun around as he tried to see each and every one of them, but they were fast. So fast! And Ozzie was tired, so tired. He just wanted it to all to be over. He wanted to sleep.
The eyes of the alpha male caught Ozzie’s eyes and held him in a trance the way Dracula hypnotizes his victims with his stare. The gaze was broken by searing pain, a sharp bite to Ozzie’s side that had opened and enlarged his wound as it spilled more blood on the dank forest floor. Ozzie jerked around. His mind was no longer in control as his body reacted helplessly and fought to survive. The coyote’s jaws were dripping with blood, Ozzie’s blood, as it raced off to rejoin the circle.
Another bite from his rear, this time on an upper leg. Then another, always from the rear, Ozzie kept turning to ward off attacks from behind. As he did, he constantly presented a new flank to the next in line. He was weakening fast and couldn’t fend them off. Somehow he knew it. He needed time...he needed to block the rear, to keep them in front of him and in his line of sight. Sitting against the poplar and letting the tree block his rear seemed the answer.