I stuck around my truck untill day brake, nothing happened and luckily for me this was the first night of two, so I hadn’t fallen asleep. But I needed to get moving if I wanted to be somewhere safe when sleep would eventually take me. So, I walked out of the box canyon and called a service truck to bring me four new tires.

  The tech came and started working on swapping out the tires. He was in his fifties quite overweight but strong.

  “How did you pop all four of um?” he asked. Looking at the truck.

  “I didn’t.” I responded scanning the canyon around us.

  “No?” he looked at me pulling out a jack and a couple jack stands.

  “I parked it and walked up the canyon, when I got back all four were deflated.”

  “Hum. No one really comes up this canyon anymore. It washes out so much, it’s too unpredictable. Last year I got a call that a group of climbers were stranded after parking up here. They spent the night and it must’v rained, because when they packed up and came back to their car the road had washed out. The county had to bring a bobcat and a dozer to patch the road, before we could get them out.”

  “Interesting, how many times in the past year has it washed out?” I asked still looking around the canyon.

  The man was under my truck using a drill to quickly raze his jack. “Five, this year, they got tired of fixing it, so they put that ‘washed out’ road sign up at the entrance, it looks like it was knocked over.”

  “That explains why I didn’t see it.” This was definitely the right place.

  The mechanic replaced my tires quickly. I was counting out hundreds to pay for the service when we heard the sound of steel cutting into earth echoing softly from down the canyon.

  “You see anyone else up here?” he asked as I handed him the cash. Two more distinct shoveling sounds drifted up to us. I didn’t like it. I was unsure what I was dealing with. Whatever it was, seemed to have made its way below us now.

  “No.” I said after a moment.

  “Someone cut your tires.” The man said after another barely perceptible sound of digging. “People have been going missing.” He said that last part to himself. “You want to follow me back down; I’m not saying it’s anything but to be honest this Canyon just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Ya.” I replied. “Don’t get too far ahead of me. I don’t think it’s water that’s been washing out this Canyon.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it.” The man looked down the canyon.

  The new tires felt good on the hard packed dirt road. Lots of traction. We wound our way slowly down the canyon. Untill, we reached another wash out. It was of cores dry. I got out, the technician did as well. I didn’t miss the handgun tucked between his seat and center console. The side of the road had been carved out at a narrow point in the road. A few clear shovel marks but the dirt behind had been broken down to fine grains. I looked at the man.

  “You think your truck will fit?” I asked.

  “No, but yours might. If we kick the dirt back in place. I have a shovel. We can build up and span the gap with my four-wheeler ramp.” He looked around. I did the same, but there was nothing to see.

  We switched out the order of our trucks and started building the road back up, as we worked the sound of shoveling resumed further down the canyon. We looked at each other. Swet dripping, covered in the dry dirt.

  “We should probably walk down there.” The man said. “We dig out of this one and we’ll just have to stop again when we get to the next, if my hunch is right their digging on that thin bend half a mile down, If they cut through that neither of our trucks are going to make it out.”

  I was trying to get him off the mountain without dealing with whatever this was, but that didn’t seem to be an option. “I’ll grab my guns and pack, I guess were walking.”

  “I don’t want to, but I think your right.” The man walked back to his truck and retrieved his own handgun, and a bottle of Gatorade.

  He looked at me when I came walking back shot gun slung over a shoulder, my AR 10 in my hands.

  When we got close to the narrow bend the shoveling stopped. The only sign that anyone was there, when we turned the corner was freshly dug dirt not all broken down to fine grains. The gap was not enough to prevent my truck from navigating the narrow corner, but it wouldn’t take much more digging to stop it.

  “If you want, one of us can go back and get your truck. The other can hold the road here and keep whoever from finishing. Won’t stop them from digging somewhere else down the canyon. But we could probably get down before they are able to cut enough into another section of road.”

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  “No.” I stated. “We should just walk out. Whoever it is, is trying to kill us, splitting up will just get one or the both of us killed.” Doing this would likely mean I would need to get Chris involved but splitting up would likely get the technician killed.

  We came acrost one more spot that had been dug, a bleached leather glove lay discarded near by the freshly torn soil, but it must have been there a while because when I kicked it over there were a few long rectangular worms that had taken refuge beneath the glove.

  There was no other sign of life the entire time we walked down the ravine. I even poled out my thermal monocular but only picked out birds from the brush. As we reached the end of the canyon, the sound of digging commenced far up behind us. I was starting to get tired, but whatever it was, was close.

  The man was calling the county cops on the phone. “I’m telling you Jonna, someone’s been digging out the road to Balsom Hallow, it’s spooky as hell there’s no sight of anyone whoever they are, they are back up there digging we must of walked past them at some point… I don’t know how, the canyon is too narrow to hied… Okay we will be here at the base of the mountain, see you soon.”

  He turned to me, I was still staring at the mountain behind us. “My cop buddy is going to pick us up. I don’t know when we will get the trucks out, but I think they are going to search the mountain again, this time with dogs. I don’t want to say it but that rumored serial killer might be the one who’s been causing the wash outs. You were lucky.”

  Boy this was going to be a mess when Chris got my text. I began digging in my pack looking for my bottled skunk musk.

  “What are you doing.” The mechanic asked.

  “Look I was going to come back in a day and try and deal with this then, but I called you and now the local officers are going to git in over their heads.” I paused. It was always hard trying to explain my reality to people.

  “I’m a government contractor.” I pulled out Chrises business card from my wallet. He could sort this out better than I could. “Give this to your cop friend, this is my project manager he’s with the FBI, now that you are mostly safe, I had better go back up and deal with it.”

  The man looked at me. “You seemed a little off to me. So, you were already after the serial killer?”

  I pulled out the musk and started to shove my equipment back in my pack. “Ya. Take my shot gun. I’m going to have to climb this mountain, this pack and rifle are heavy enough. I will come pick it up at the Polece station when I’m done.”

  I began to apply the skunk musk. If whatever it was could smell, I didn’t want it catching my cent on the way back up.

  ***

  Looping far to the left I trudged up the side of the mountain. I watched as a police SUV came down the empty road and picked up the technician far below me. They watched me for a bit but soon lost interest and left, I wondered if the officer called Chris, one thing I was sure of, I wouldn’t be picking up my shot gun untill Chris called the department and gave me the go ahead.

  After hours of hiking, I crawled and looked over the edge of the canyon trying to find whoever or whatever was responsible for collapsing the road. Pulling out my rifle I scanned the trail far below with my scope. For the next three hours as the sun set, I crawled along the ridge and scanned the darkening canyon below.

  Just as the sun was touching the horizon, as the first waves of deep exhaustion set in warning me I didn’t have much more time before my predictable narcoleptic sleep would set in, something slipped from the shadow in the canyon below, it walked jerkily to where my truck was parked. The distance was far and dark, but I could see the figure was wearing a thick flannel shirt, jeans, and a wide brim hat with some sort of cloth wrapped around its face.

  I don’t know where he had come from, a cave, perhaps? The canyon walls were steep, floor bare, unless he had been sitting under a bush the whole time I would have seen him approach from ether side of the canyon. He couldn’t have been in a bush because I scanned them with my thermal. Unless thermals didn’t work on the creature. I dug into my pack, pulling out my thermal monocular focusing it on the person who was now on their knees digging at the road making its way towards the front of my truck. Despite the distance the person glowed red through my optic. Wherever they had hidden it was a good spot.

  It took me less time than normal to set up my shot. It was the threat of falling asleep on the ridge and having the person fined me in the next twelve hours that rushed me. I didn’t know for certain that the person below me was the killer. Perhaps, it was some farm kid who was pulling a prank on whoever went up the canyon, 20% to 15% percent chance that was the case. In my line of work, you needed to follow your gut.

  My gut was telling me the person below wanted me dead and was likely responsible for the many bodies in the oval further up the canyon. But my gut had been wrong before, grace said as much. In the end I decided to hell with the consequences giving into my gut and slipped down the other side of the canyon slowly creeping down the steep slope, within six hundred yards of the digging figure.

  The sun was now fully set, the horizon barely giving off enough light for me to identify the hunched over figure spastically digging around the front tire of my truck.

  Crack… Crack-Crack. I let three rounds fly. The thing paused its digging turning to look up at me then collapsed to the ground. Crack, crack. I put two more rounds into the center mass before slinging my rifle over my shoulder. I needed to get off this mountain as fast as possible. I was going to fall asleep, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Normally I would check, make sure the monster was dead, then hunker down in my truck, but climbing down the six hundred almost vertical inner face of the canyon in the dark was not going to happen. I would need to walk all the way around and back up the canyon road, that would take hours. If I was fast, I could run the ridge line down to the wheat fields below and maybe holed up in one of the barns at the base of the mountain.

  When I reached the peak of the mountain, I pulled out my monocular and looked for the dead man. I wanted to make sure it was dead. Nothing, no heat signature whatsoever. Surely it hadn’t cooled in the ten minutes it had taken me to climb back up the ridge. I scanned for thirty more seconds. The only red image that I picked up was a large dot the size of my fist slowly scooting away from the direction of my truck. Likely some sort of small mammal, a vole probably. Throwing my thermal back in my pack and switching to my night vision, I hurried down the crest of the mountain.

  Halfway down the mountain, blackness washed over me, my body slowed, and I crouched settling down on the rough mountain side, as my body gave up, giving into sleep.