They left everything but the guns in their hands behind and ran into the woods. The sky had gone dark and the two boys without Wampus eyes struggled to see, and relied on Woodrow to lead them. But he wasn’t sure where he was going either. He just ran downward and hoped to find a way to the bottom of that cliff that didn’t require him to break every bone in his body.

  There was movement in the trees ahead. The beast ran with erratic, twitching movements towards the boys. Woodrow shot at it without breaking his stride. The first bullet whizzed past the creature and grazed a tree. The second went through its brain and it fell to the ground.

  But there were more — a lot more.

  Chuck and Bill Jones started shooting wildly, hoping they’d accidentally hit something. They still couldn’t see the Not Deer approaching and only had the rustling of leaves, muffled by their own running, to go on. Chuck managed to hit one on the shoulder, but that didn’t stop it for long. It fell to the ground for a moment, but quickly slinked back up onto its hooves and skittered on after them like nothing had happened.

  Woodrow’s lungs burned and struggled to give him the air he needed to continue running. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath — and to unload the chamber of his gun. Four deafening booms echoed from his revolver and four Not Deer were stopped in their tracks.

  He got back to running.

  A hot pressure built in his head from the exertion and his eye felt like it might pop out at any second, but the bottom of the cliffside was near. The throbbing of his head, the adrenaline in his veins, and the all-encompassing sound of wild, optimistic gunfire from the other two boys made him lose sense of his own body — it felt like his legs were moving of their own volition. They took him to the bottom of the cliff side and took a sharp left into the basin.

  A dark, glittering pond took up the bulk of the flat land, with only a thin crescent of muddy ground for the boys to walk on. The trees were more sparse and Woodrow could see much farther out, but there was still no sign of Sal or the Buck that dragged him off. The three boys crouched behind a boulder to catch their breath and reload their guns.

  “Do you see him anywhere?” Bill Jones said between huffs and puffs.

  “No,” Woodrow replied while slotting bullets into his gun’s chamber. “Shit, we should’ve never brought that gimpy sonofabitch along,” said Chuck. He shook his head solemnly. “Those damn Not Deer probably killed him by now.”

  “Sal can take care of himself,” Woodrow said. “And he had his cane with him. He ain’t gettin’ killed by a couple of bendy-legged motherfuckers that fast.”

  “There were more than a few of them motherfuckers out there,” Chuck countered. “A lot more.”

  “Just shut the hell up and let me look for him.”

  Woodrow had found his breath again and stood up from behind the boulder to scan the area. Nothing. He started to fear that Chuck might’ve been right, that Sal was dead.

  Boom

  There was a faint gunshot down a ways.

  “Only one person that could’ve been,” Bill Jones said. They ran towards the sound as fast as their aching legs could take them.

  Boom

  Another shot — fainter this time. It sounded like it was coming from within the mountain.

  “There must be a cave around here somewhere,” Chuck said. Woodrow grunted to show he agreed, and he scanned the edge of the mountain for an opening. A wide mouth peeked out from behind the trunk of a fallen tree. He smacked Chuck and Bill Jones on their shoulders and gestured for them to follow.

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  They stood at the cave’s entrance. It was pitch black within, and though it started out wide, the path quickly narrowed to the point that a single man would barely be able to fit through without putting in some serious effort. Woodrow sighed.

  “I think it’d be best if y’all stayed out here. Make sure no more of those sons of bitches follow me in, alright?”

  “To Hell with that!” “Got it.” Chuck and Bill Jones spoke at the same time, then looked at each other in confusion.

  “No fuckin’ way am I letting you go in there alone, Woodrow,” Chuck said. “God knows how many are in there waiting for you. How many bullets you got left?”

  “We won’t be any use to him in there, Chuck. We can’t see shit,” Bill Jones said. “Best for us to stay out here and stand guard.”

  Woodrow nodded.

  “I got enough on me. It’s Sal I’m worried about, if we keep standing here doing nothing. I’ll be right back, and I’ll have Ol’ Gimpy with me.”

  He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.

  Chuck still had an indignant look on his face, but he knew that they were right, and he kept his mouth shut.

  “Go get him.” Bill Jones patted Woodrow on the shoulder and slipped something into his coat pocket. “We know you can do it.”

  Another shot rang out from the cave.

  “Better hurry though.”

  Woodrow headed into the cave alone.

  The cave started out with a whole lot of nothing — just a cramped, winding path that seemed to go downward forever. Woodrow felt his pockets as he pushed himself down through the rocks. He had six bullets in one pocket and six more already loaded. Something poked him in his other pocket — a syringe. Bill Jones’s gift, in case all else failed.

  Several minutes had gone by without a gunshot ringing out, and Woodrow began to fear the worst. Slugfoot Sal was about as ornery as an old man could get, but that would only buy him a few minutes against a whole herd of Not Deer. Woodrow picked up his pace, almost slipping on a loose rock that flew from under his heavy foot and tumbled down the endless path.

  There was a grumbling in the distance.

  “You motherfuckers want some more?! I’ll give it to you. Just come over here and get it!”

  “Sal?!” Woodrow shouted.

  “Woodrow?!” Sal’s voice echoed back up.

  Woodrow flew towards the voice with reckless abandon. He gave no mind to the rocks scraping his cheeks and wedging themselves into his shoes.

  “I’m stuck in this damn crevice!” Sal shouted. Woodrow still couldn’t see him, but the voice was growing louder.

  “I’m almost there!” he said. “Just hold on!”

  “I’m holdin’, I’m holdin’,” Sal replied.

  At long last, the tunnel opened up into a spacious cavern. A hole in the high ceiling let in a beam of moonlight that covered the space in a haze of soft white and illuminated the weak waterfall that cascaded gently down the rock wall not too far behind it. In better circumstances, the place would have been downright peaceful. But Woodrow did not feel at peace.

  “Sal?” he bellowed. The sound of the waterfall felt like it was growing louder in the absence of a response. Woodrow looked around, but didn’t see his friend anywhere.

  “I’m over here!” Sal finally replied. “I’m stuck in this damn hole!”

  There was a gaping pit near the center of the cavern, and Sal’s voice came from the bottom of it. Woodrow stepped towards it and looked down. Sal was there, along with three Not Deer that lay dead around him. A faint trail of smoke came from the barrel of his cane shotgun. But his arms and legs were snapped and bent in unnatural directions. His eyes were wide and blank, staring up past Woodrow unblinkingly into infinity. A rib bone poked from his chest and he laid in a pool of blood. Some of it was the Not Deer’s and some of it was his own.

  Slugfoot Sal was dead.

  “Woodrow, I’m over here!” Slugfoot Sal said. The voice was behind Woodrow. Slowly, he turned around and saw a twelve point buck looking at him with wet, black eyes.

  He was big, without a doubt the biggest buck Woodrow had ever seen. His antlers bowed in towards each other so that they looked like an angry claw, ready to grab anyone unlucky enough to get close to the horrible creature. In most ways, he looked like a prime specimen of a deer — except for his face. The more Woodrow looked at it, the more human it looked, with bare skin, a protruding nose and lips, and dark, intelligent eyes. He stared at the creature in shock while its lips curled into a wicked smile.

  “I’m over here, Woodrow,” the creature said in a perfect imitation of Sal. “Took out as many of them fuckers as I could, but I couldn’t hold out for long. If only y’all had got to me sooner…”

  The creature’s face contorted into a pained expression and tears streamed down its cheeks. The buck wept with heaving groans of anguish, growing louder and wilder. Another Not Deer slid out from under a rock and wept alongside him. Woodrow looked around and saw Not Deer slink out of nooks and crannies through the cavern and join in the weeping until a deafening crescendo of his dead friend’s voice overwhelmed his senses.

  A guttural roar erupted from within him and he fired his gun into the herd.