A couple years back after a bad break up a couple of guys from my squad took me out and introduced me to a drink called 4loco. I woke up in the dayroom of the barracks with my face in a puddle of puke, a pair of tighty whiteys that weren’t mine, and one green boot sock on. I was dehydrated, had a raging headache, was still a little drunk, and it tasted like a cat had shat in my mouth. Up till now it was the worst morning I’d ever had. Today the natural sunlight had me squinting like some kind of vampire as I rolled over and tried to curl up into a ball. It was cold and I blindly flailed around for the edge of my blanket to pull it over me. When I couldn’t find the blanket I finally woke up enough to look around and damn near had a panic attack.

I was outside. Normally that’s fine. I’m an outdoors kind of guy, and it wasn’t the first time I’d slept out under the stars. I’d never done it buck naked before, and I was certain I’d gone to sleep in my own bed last night. That was bad, but the pine needles under my ass and the frost I could see on the trees around me were worse. I lived off post from Ft. Hood, and you don’t get a lot of snow in that part of Texas in mid-summer. It was more of a trapped in a sauna kind of climate with plenty of heat and humidity. This looked like the Pacific NW and it was probably under 50 degrees out. Not only was I lost and not dressed for the area, I wasn’t dressed at all and that was a real risk of hypothermia. I climbed to my feet, stiff from the cold and looked around, trying to figure it out.

I’ve hunted a bit, suffered through the oh so unpleasant SERE school, and even had a little high speed Boy Scout training under my belt from about twenty years ago, but I wasn’t exactly a TV Indian. There were no visible footprints, and I couldn’t see a trail or any broken vegetation giving a hint to how I’d gotten out here. From all I could tell someone from the Enterprise had just beamed my sorry ass down here in the middle of nowhere. As I cast around in a slightly larger circle I noticed a green glow off to the Northeast. I was getting cold just standing here, and decided to get some blood flowing while I checked it out. I started to jog in that direction, flopping unpleasantly as I went.

I run on a regular basis. I’m not one of those weirdos who enjoy it, my frame is built for width not length and I’ve got an ugly gait that’s hard on the knees. It came with the job though, so I had somehow always managed to get by. Barefoot, over broken ground made it even worse than usual though and by the time I’d gone a solid mile I gave up on running and settled into a fast walk. Even though I wasn’t a runner, I could ruck one of those marathon sissies into the ground. I settled into a steady pace and just kept going, eating up the miles.

The light had gotten a little brighter, and even if the treeline got in the way now and then I remembered enough orienteering to keep a pretty steady bearing off of the occasional landmark. There were some pretty good sized mountains off to my east, and fog that I was guessing meant a body of water over to the west. Some of the trees were just massive and I was pretty sure that meant this must be some kind of national park or something. I couldn’t think of any old growth forest in North America that weren’t part of one. I knew a couple guys who would go to inordinate lengths for practical jokes, but between the cold and my growing thirst I was starting to get pissed.

It felt like someone was watching me, and that thought stopped me. I looked around, trying to spot someone shadowing me in the forest, and even though I couldn’t see anyone I decided to take a chance. I cupped my hands to my face and yelled.

“Hey, it’s over. Not funny. Come out now or I’m going to fuck you up.”

I’ve got pretty good projection, and my voice boomed out in the forest, startling a bunch of birds off a tree nearby. That was the only response. I shivered. Only a couple of minutes standing still and the chill was creeping back into me so I started walking again. There was that elusive green light ahead. Lights meant people, people meant warm clothes, transportation, and eventual revenge so I just kept going.

I was back into the rhythm of it, making tracks, mind wandering looking for solution when something burst out of the underbrush towards me. It was either a monster of a coyote, or maybe a malnourished wolf, or even some kind of dog breed snarling and lunging for me. The fur was brown with a greenish tinge like you’d expect on a sloth, and it’s body was pretty much coyote with shorter legs like maybe some bull dog had gotten in there. At least that’s what I decided later. In the moment all I had time to think was “Holy Shit!” and then it was on me. It went for my throat even though I was standing and I barely had time to stick my arm up as I tried to dodge back. The things jaws latched onto my forearm as it barreled into me. I’m a big guy, and it was probably only 50 pounds or so but it was moving fast enough that my dodge turned into a fall. Everything after that was a combination of reflex and luck.

I’d never really trained for a non-human opponent, but groundfighting is all about controlling the position. By the time I hit the ground I’d already started to roll and my free hand came up and clamped onto the back of it’s neck. I came up on my toes, forcing all of my weight onto my chest pinning it’s body to the ground. At the same time instead of trying to yank my arm back I shoved it forward, deeper into the things throat like I was defending against an arm bar. My hand on it’s neck gave me leverage as I thrust the coyote thing’s head back and it started to panic. The claws on the hind limbs tore at my stomach but the pain just spurred me on until there was a sickening crack noise from it’s neck and it went limp underneath me.

I had to pry the jaw open with my other hand before I could pull my left arm out of the thing’s mouth and I just rolled over, panting and shaking as adrenaline dumped through my system. Eventually I calmed down enough to sit up and check my injuries. I had bright red scrapes all over my stomach and ribs, a couple of them were bleeding but apparently it hadn’t done much actual damage even though it had felt like it was eviscerating me. My arm was in a lot worse shape, I could actually see deep into the muscle of it and while I could close my hand I had trouble opening it. The fact that the only thing I could feel was a deep ache was actually kind of scary. Did that mean there was nerve damage? And how the hell was I supposed to stop the bleeding?

I looked around as if on some level I expected a Walgreen’s to have popped up in the middle of the woods. I put pressure on the brachial artery in my left arm to slow the blood while I thought it through and eventually shrugged. It seemed pretty gross, and I didn’t like my odds of avoiding infection, but I could always get antibiotics later, bleeding to death right now was a bigger danger. I stood up, shifted the coyote’s corpse with my foot to get a better angle and stomped down. I got a crunch sound with no visible result, so I stomped again.

There it went. The jaw shattered and a jagged edge of bone ripped through it’s flesh. I knelt down and worried at it with my free hand. Tearing the hole wider and pulling at the jawbone until I had it free, then scraping off the ligaments and soft tissue on the other teeth still in it’s head. Pretty soon I had a caveman style knife/slash saw, made of half a canine’s mandible. While the teeth hadn’t felt that way when I was getting bit, it was dull as hell as I used it to try and skin the coyote. Once I had the hide off the body it actually worked pretty good as a scraper when I peeled off the fat and soft tissue. I cut a length free to act as my bandage and tried to decide which would carry less bacteria, flesh side or fur side.

“IV antibiotics and keep them coming, my good man. Maybe a side of rabies vaccine to wash them down?”

I figured either way I was screwed so I went flesh side down as it wouldn’t look as gross when I caught side of it. The rest of the hide I wrapped around my waist like a kilt, shoving the jaw knife through like a crude button to hold it together. That one I left fur side in because I didn’t want the slimey feel of an untanned hide against my unmentionables. I wasn’t exactly warm now, but it was better than bare assing it for the rest of my walk, and I set off again towards the green glow.

I was moving slower now, not so much because of the injury, but because I kept stopping to check my surroundings. I couldn’t think of any canine’s that weren’t pack animals and if this coyote type thing had homies nearby I wanted to see them before they saw me. It was probably futile, thousands of years of evolution made them better at that kind of thing than I was but I couldn’t help but try. A couple of hours later and I could hear something in the distance. I couldn’t identify the sound and I got even slower. Step, step, pause and listen, then repeat. When I figured it out I couldn’t help but smile.

“Giardia can kiss my ass, that’s running water.”

I hustled forward through the trees and came to a clearing. There was probably 20 yards of open space and then a small river, or maybe a big creek, winding through the area. Even better, the edge of the treeline meant I could see much further, and I squinted in the direction of the green glow.

“Now that’s weird.”

There was a big ass neon green sign in the distance, shaped like an arrow pointing straight down in the middle of a big open meadow. There was something under the sign but I couldn’t tell what it was from here. The plan was obvious enough. Cross the water, hike through the meadow, head to the giant green arrow. Something about it just didn’t feel right though. Once I left the tree line I would be exposed and for some reason it just felt off to me. I decided to sit and think for a minute before I went on. , I settled down and squatted on my heels to just watch for a bit. I ignored the thirst and cold, just settled into that blank headspace folks called zen or in the zone and tried to consider my options. Eventually it paid off when one of the logs lying half in, half out of the water moved.

“I call bullshit.”

I couldn’t help but say it out loud. I wasn’t a wildlife expert, but I was damned if I could think of any place outside of a zoo you would see crocodiles hanging out feet away from a place I’d seen unmelted snow in the shade. Big ass reptiles didn’t mess with cold weather. This was one experience too much and I started wondering if I was stuck in some kind of lucid dream. I closed my eyes to visualize and try and concentrate, then opened them again. Nope, no half naked Playmates lolling around in a jacuzzi. Not a lucid dream then. I mentally measured the crocodile as about 15 ft long, and even though my hand drifted down to my jaw knife I knew it wasn’t realistic. Give me a firearm and I’d walk away from that thing with a new set of boots, but there was no way I was going down there with this shitty knife.

I made my decision and started walking downstream. It was survival 101. Creeks flowed to rivers, rivers to oceans. Historically human cities were founded based on ease of transport of goods, which in the good old days meant boats. In most parts of the world, barring specific knowledge, if you followed any body of water far enough you maximize your chance of reaching civilization. I walked what felt like twenty minutes when the ground at the treeline started to slope up while the river sloped down. It wasn’t long after I’d noticed this that I saw a large stone bridge crossing over the top of the river. Bridges meant people, and I was so excited I immediately broke into a jog.

The jog was enough to shake my kilt loose and I had to stop to keep from losing my wolf pelt, but after a few minutes of fussing with the jawbone I got it fastened back together and started back up at a more sedate pace. The bridge was real stone instead of concrete. It looked like it was made of great big blocks piled together to form an arch, but they weren’t uniform in size. It looked old, the kind of construction I’d seen in Europe but never really bumped into in the States. The path that led to it seemed wrong too. It wasn’t wide enough for a car, but was too well developed for just a walking path. It was packed sand, not asphalt or gravel, and that seemed out of place for the area. If you were building out of natural materials, wouldn’t you build it out of stuff that was close by?

As creepy as the path was, I decided I didn’t care. The path had been put in by people, and finding other people was definitely the top of my to do list. I started down the path, and decided speed was worth the hassle. I grabbed the edge of the wolf pelt kilt to keep it up and started to jog. The path led over the river and started to curve, heading toward that green arrow I’d seen before. It was further out than I’d realized, it seemed like I jogged forever. When I reset the distance in my head I realized I’d misjudged the scale of the arrow, it was a lot bigger than I realized. When I got closer I slowed down to a walk, struggling to understand what I was seeing.

The green neon arrow floated in the air without visible support. The object underneath was a door. Just a normal wooden door in a frame sticking up from a threshold sitting on the grass.. Cheap brass knob on the front, no visible lock. I stepped around the door, trying to figure it out and it looked pretty much the same on the other side. Wooden door, brass knob, no explanations. I leaned forward and knocked hesitantly. I’m not sure what I expected, obviously there wasn’t anyone there to answer and I chuckled softly to myself.

The path had ended here, and I considered turning around and following it in the opposite direction. Just for shits and giggles before I committed, I reached forward and tried the knob. The door was unlocked and as it swung open a wave of green light filled my vision and I saw words in white lettering floating in front of me. Introduction Complete. Loading.