"Stalked and Stalker" Pt. 3 (Patreon)

I entered, and won, Dean Spencer's story contest for one of his pieces of art. I'm now completing it with weekly entries. This is part three.

Part One can be found here. and Part Two here.

Paying Patrons can instead go here, for a compiled, slightly more edited version of the story-to-date, along with my thoughts and authors notes about each section.

Low res image. High res will be used for the final product. Art by Dean Spencer)

“Alec, John, Blizzard!”

MacKenzie watched the two men just long enough to make sure they’d heard him. John Soloman immediately went back to where he’d dug the odd skull out of the ice, pulling a canvas bag out of his heavy fur coat as he did so. Alec briefly turned back to Mackenzie, and waved to show he’d understood the expedition leader. MacKenzie was confident Soloman would stow the skull for travel, and duSeverency wouldn’t let him take too long in doing so.

Then MacKenzie ducked back into the strange stairwell, and called up to Blaze who was now at the very top of the stairs, crouched just short of the landing it led to.

“Blaze! Blizzard coming in. We need to move in here for shelter.”

Blaze turned to face him without rising from her crouch. MacKenzie saw with surprise she had her short-barrel Smith & Wesson Model 10 in her hand.

“Mac, I don’t think we want to shelter in here,” Blaze called down.

“What’s up?” MacKenzie asked.

Blaze shook her head.

“Whoever built this place was NOT walking the straight-and-narrow. The wall and ceiling stop looking like the cavern was found or carved once you're up here. It looks more… grown. Out of petrified… roots? Roots that kinda look like bones? And I am NOT convinced they aren’t moving every time I look away. This whole place has that spoiled applesauce feel.”

MacKenzie looked back out at the approaching storm. It was coming in fast, and looked as bad as any weather he’d seen. There was no time to build the kind of shelter he’d want to ride out that kind of severe squall… but they COULD flip the boats over, lash them together, and stake them down. It would suck… but so would running into anything further in this strange shaft that could worry Blaze.

MacKenzie was just about to order Alec to help him flip the boats, when he saw a dark shape out in the oncoming sheet of driving snow. It was only visible for a split second, and even then it was hazy and indistinct. But MacKenzie was sure of at least two things. First, it was big. Twenty feet tall, at a minimum, and given how hard it was to see details, probably larger than that. Second, it had arms. Long arms. With claws.

“Sorry, Blaze, we got applesauce issues out here too! Keep an eye out up there, we’re coming in,” shouted MacKenzie.

There were only a few minutes before the snow hit, and whatever was coming with it could arrive even sooner if it decided to move faster than the storm. MacKenzie pulled on a cord around his neck, bringing up a three-inch long whistle of nickel-plated brass. He blew into it, producing three short and one long shrill tones, the distinctive sound of a London Metropolitan Police Whistle. The heads of Alec duSeverency and Professor Soloman snapped to look at him. They knew the code well.

Danger, MacKenzie had signaled, then take shelter.

As MacKenzie moved quickly but carefully to the boats, he was gratified to see both men moving with the same experienced mix of alacrity and caution towards him. He made one urgent sweep of this pickaxe to point to the entrance to the stairwell, and duSeverency waved an arm to indicate he’d seen the gesture. MacKenzie reached the nearer boat, the one with the crucial supply packs, and hauled one of the hefty backpacks out from under its tarp.

That was when three tangled masses of branch and thorn charged out of the snow right at him.

These were different than the tall, clawed form he had seen, and that figure was now nowhere in sight. These were roughly the shape of wolves—triangular heads wide at the back and narrowing to an approximation of jaws and teeth. Each had a lean build with four long, lanky legs quickly eating the distance between them and MacKenzie. They seemed to be made entirely of plant matter, twists and swirls of branch, bark, thorn, and vine, constantly churning and lashing around some unseen center mass. The longest vines swirled around them in whiplike motions, keeping the creatures from having a fixed shape. The thorns and branches stuck out at all angles, their spinning scoring and tearing at the ice and snow of the ground even as they ran in heads-down sprints.

MacKenzie's brain froze for a split second, a primitive instinct inherited from his more animal ancestors screaming that these were predators, and he was prey, and it was time to run across the snowy beach and hope he could outrun some other member of the herd.

‘Fuck that,’ whispered the part of his mind that had seen a thousand horrors before, both man-made and occult, though never THESE creatures.

MacKenzie slung the gear pack up onto his shoulder, using the same motion to hurl his lit lantern out at the lead bramble-wolf. He did not wait to see if it hit, instead turning and running with all his strength toward the stairwell’s entrance. He saw Soloman was also already inside the stairwell, heading up toward Blaze. But Alec?

Alec was at his own pack, which he’d laid next to the fire he’d built to try to cook the bunyips. Just as Mackenzie realized Alec wasn’t running, duSeverency stood tall holding a bundle he’d taken from his pack, tossing off an oilskin it had been wrapped in. His meter-long FM MAC 24 machine rifle gleamed in the firelight as Alec slammed a 25-round magazine into the top of it.

The creatures behind MacKenzie let rip creaking, popping howls. Alec’s weapon barked in reply.