Ch 20

“Bro, he would never just go home,” Vaughan said, voice thick with worry “He's supposed to be on this bachelor party trip for a fucking week, and this was day three. We were going to the zoo man, he would never have missed that! Besides, what's-his-face and that girl with the nice tits but not great face swore they saw him go into the mountain with those two Mexicans. He had cash on him, bro, and I never trusted those cartel bean-fuckers. Louden,” he said suddenly “Did you invite them?”

Louden, along with Ben, McCrea and Polk, were walking in single file behind Vaughan, up a trail on the mountain. They had been searching for about an hour, each armed, nervous about the occasional howls they were hearing. Ben in particular, seemed sensitive to everything around him. Something in the air, something about how everything looked, it made him feel like he was getting high on something. It was subtle, but Ben was an expert on getting high.

“Did I invite them? Well, I don't really know who I invited.” Louden said, feigning stupidity. It was a particularly polished skill of hers, and anyone who knew what she was like could spot it immediately. Vaughan was not the sort of person to doubt a pretty face, but there wasn't any room left in his heart for Louden's. He turned his attention to Polk.

“Of course she invited them,” Polk said, voice edged with anger “She sold like two gallon bags of pills to those fuckers.” Louden shot her a dirty look and then stuck her tongue out at Polk.

“Look, let's just keep looking,” Ben said, face pale “I want to get out of here as fast as we can, this place is giving me the creeps.”

In the distance, a wolf howled.

“Speaking of,” McCrea said, pointing in the direction of the howl “Does that sound like a coyote to you? Because it doesn't sound like one to me.”

“Would you stop it,” Louden said, voice rising in pitch “Between bad-trip bobby over there,” She pointed at Ben “and you, I'm starting to get seriously freaked out. Let me tell you what happened,” she said, and everybody stopped to listen “What, keep walking you fucks,” they started moving again “Here's what happened. Vaughan's buddy went up the mountain with those polite Mexican drug dealers, and they got shitfaced on alcohol and pills, and they're passed the fuck out somewhere up here. The most danger they are in is from sunburn. End of story,” she said, but Vaughan didn't hear it, because he started running and shouting.

“It's them!” He said, looking back and gesturing for everyone to follow. Everyone started to run after him. Polk and Louden pulled out bottles of water and unscrewed them as they ran, ready to start administering life saving hydration techniques. If there was one thing their shithole of a desert school district had taught them, it was how to not die in the desert and save a life from heatstroke.

“No! No, NO NO!” Vaughan had slid to his knees near his friend, cradling his body and shedding tears, continuing to say no. The rest of the group slowed and began taking in their surroundings. A pile of quartz rubble, a pyramid covered in moss and muddy ground. Another body, this one horribly disfigured, lay in the mud. Nobody wanted to touch it, or even approach it.

“Hey, Ben,” McCrea said, eyes wide “I think some fucked up shit happened here.”

“You aren't kidding,” Ben said, fighting down nausea “Let's get out of here and call the fucking cops.” Out of morbid curiosity, he got closer to the mangled body and saw a handgun tucked into the waistline of the pants. Exchanging a look with McCrea, Ben took the gun.

Louden was crying, a frustrated look on her face. Vaughan shot her a black, angry look, then went back to cradling his newly acquired and recently lost friend. McCrea had his phone out and was holding it up into the air, the universal sign language of 'No Signal' clearly displayed. Polk very slowly walked over to Ben and began tugging on his sleeve frantically.

“Ben,” she whispered, voice barely escaping, eyes wide and brimming with tears “Ben,” she said again, arm shaking and heavy with the gravity of fear, finger barely pointing off into the area beyond the plateau they stood on. Ben scanned the area, and saw a large wolf with strangely rounded ears and elongated legs, body round and muscled in the back, it's proportions all wrong for a canine, crouched low. It's eyes were green, the whites were a shocking white, almost like glass. The pupil was a four armed spiral that tightened when it noticed Ben staring at it. It raised it's lips and threw back its head and howled, sending a wave of fear through the group. It stared metaphorical lasers at Ben, solid eye contact, and charged him.

“Look out!” he shouted, and opened fire on the animal. Every shot missed, save one that hit it's leg, blasting the thin appendage off and causing the Grass Wolf to miss a step, before snarling and continuing to lope along, having lost only a little of it's momentum. The wolf was about to slam into Ben, when McCrea tackled it from the side, knocking it out of the way and sending it tumbling to the ground. Ben did not waste his opportunity, and unloaded the remainder of his magazine into the temporarily dazed animal.

It didn't yelp as it died, it growled, nearly a yell, then total silence. The body remained for a moment, then broke apart into panes of yellow and red light, leaving behind several glowing orbs that raced towards Ben, a stone like obsidian that shone with red light and emitted black smoke, a gallon bag of ecstasy, and a rotating window of light with the pictograph of an eye on it.

Ben didn't feel the orbs impact his body, but rather felt a surge of energy and mental clarity. He ran over to the pile of loot and, without knowing why, mind wandering to the habits gained from games, he touched the pane of light.

The moment he did, it was as though a new room appeared in his mind, a sudden surge of understanding, the kind of breakthrough that only happens in dreams and are forgotten in the morning. Yet this was so much stronger, so much more defined than anything that had ever come from a dream. Ben didn't just know what to do next, he was already doing it.

Ben, suddenly full of confidence, ejected the expired magazine from his handgun and put a fresh one in. In the distance, eight giant mice charged, drawn to the area by the last defiant cry of their fellow monster. Ben's lip curled, and without really focusing, he opened fire; every shot landing exactly where he intended it to, right between the eyes, blasting the group to a storm of light that rushed towards him, and leaving piles of loot on the ground where they fell, including two guns. Ben's confidence didn't waver until approximately ten seconds later, when he suddenly forgot everything he had just known about aiming.

“Dude!” Vaughan shouted, running towards Ben and picking him up in a bear hug, spinning him around and shouting joyously “You're a fuckin badass!”

Louden was cautiously approaching the many, many bags of pills on the ground. Experimentally, she opened one and nibbled a piece off of a brightly colored tab. Her smile could have melted ice and unzipped a man's pants, and she took the entire pill.

“Fucking, Jackpot.”

Around them, the bodies lay, exactly where they were, momentarily forgotten.