Suddenly I woke to the sensation of falling. I was rolling down the side of the mountain, my NVG’s were gone, likely ripped away as I tumbled. I squirmed flailing my arms and legs doing everything I could to bring myself to a stop. Colliding with a stiff bush slowed me enough to gain control of the fall. I was able to bring myself to a rough stop.

  How had I messed up so badly, there hadn’t been a cliff nearly this steep where I had given into sleep. It was then I saw the figure looking down on me from the oval ridge above.

  It looked like a scarecrow, dressed in a tattered flannel button down shirt, torn blue jeans and a wide brim hat. One black eye socket peered down at me through a rat bitten hole in the weathered tee shirt that was tied over the creature’s head.

  It jerkily, began climbing its way down the steep inner face of the canyon. I was stunned for a moment. Something that uncoordinated should not be able to make its way down to me so quickly.

  I slipped, letting my body slide closer to the Black hole beneath so I could grab a protruding bush. Grabbing it I fished under my arm for my 1911 just as the creature reached me. It pulled an old hand scythe from the missing buttons in the middle of its flannel shirt. The scythe bit into the back of my Kevlar jacket as I shoved my 1911 at the scarecrow. Bits of carcass splattered me with each trigger pull.

  Bang-bang-bang-bang, bang. I walked my rounds up its chest, the last one finding a place in its neck. The creature lost grip of the mountain side and fell down through the darkness. Three long moments and I heard the hard impact and the snap of bones on hard gravel.

  Something was crawling on me, many something’s. I was unlucky enough to have fallen into a nest of some sort of grub. I resisted the urge to discard my gun, instead I slid it back in its holster. Then began beating and slapping at the worm-like creatures that were crawling over my body and down my neck, they bit and thrashed taring my flesh. I didn’t stop untill I either killed or knocked them all off.

  Slowly gently I climbed up and out of the oval on the cliff side. It wasn’t until I was on top of the oval looking back over the edge that I realized where I was. I was over the mass grave at the top of the canyon where all that gravel had been piled to hide those bodies. I must have been dragged or carried acrost the mountain. It had tossed me in with the rest of its dead.

  The scarecrow’s body was only half intact when I got to it. A mass of broken bones was all that was left of the lower half, but that’s not what disturbed me. It was the mass of long rectangular worms. They were wrapped all around the upper skeleton of a dead man’s remains. Adhering together they jerkily made the skeleton crawl, hand over hand towards the back of the canyon.

  I think the little buggers could feel the earth move as I approached because they abandoned making the skeleton crawl and swarmed around its head. Incasing the skull in a tight throng, their bodies somehow tightly binding to one another.

  I kicked the living flesh ball lightly, some of the maggots-worm things fell off, but the majority were fused so tightly together it felt like kicking a solid rubber ball. A slight tremor of revulsion traveled up my spine, those were the little buggers that had been crawling all over me.

  My first thought was to smash the loose worms with rocks but seeing that they were determined to join their brothers. I simply waited until all the ones that could crawl, crawled over and attached themselves to the mass, after that, I kicked it back to my truck. The ball would grab at and adhere to the gravel, so I kept it from rolling over anything too solid.

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  Back at my truck I pulled out Rudy’s big plastic bowl and flopped the mass onto it, then I grabbed my gas can. Predictably the worms began to break away and scatter as I splashed them with gasoline, I lit the mass with a flick from a cardboard match, the little worms hist and popped writhing.

  Something deep within the mass began to shriek like a wounded bird, the mass slowly burned and shriveled revealing the worn skull. A large larva grubby looking thing pushed its way out of the eye socket spilling and flopping on to the ground.

  It was fat and about the size of a foam football, chard black in places, its original color a pinkish gray. It tried to inch away from me still shrieking, big black bulbus eye above its tiny mouth looking back at me as it fled.

  After taking a couple pictures with my disposable camera, documenting the creature for future reference I hoped I wouldn’t need. I dumped more gasoline on the larva creature and relit the fire. I pushed the floundering mass back with its chard minions and began piling dead branches, getting the fire as hot as possible to insure a complete burn. I would need to get Chris down here with a team to search for every little worm. Whatever this was we didn’t need more of them.

  My phone buzzed, I flicked it open. “Hello.”

  “Anthony.” The Voice on the other end was urgent. “Where are You?” It was Chris.

  “Utah why.”

  “That’s what grace said.” There was a pause. “The Rocky Mountain horror, is moving south. Three bodies have been found hanging in trees. We caught a frame of it on satellite last night just about to cross the Utah Border. We think it’s caught your cent.”

  Chest hollow, I crouched down in a squat.

  “Anthony are you there?” Chris was urgently asking.

  I spit out bile. “Yes.”

  “Get out of there. It should go back to its mountain range once it loses your sent, distance son make distance.”

  “My trucks stuck, it’s going to take me a while to dig out.” Probably all day, was that enough time?

  “I’ll see if I can convince them to send a chopper. Don’t count on it, after the last encounter they placed a no contact order. If hell fires can’t kill it, they don’t think anything can.”

  “Ya, I know.” I said running over to the technician’s truck to see what tools I had to work with. Trying to push away the terror that was trying to consume me.

  ***

  Over the next four hours I shoveled and dug. Cut dozens of branches, doing all I could to build up the earth that the worm mass had broken down to fine dust. After building up the road weaving brush and limbs into the loos soil, I laid down the four-wheeler ramps that were in the back of the technicians truck. I pulled forward, four-wheel drive engaged, I tore over the loos slanted road, tires spun my trucks back end sliding to the left, then the front tires caught the other side and I was pulled past the washout.

  I flew down the canyon as fast as I could, the only thought on my mind was putting distance between me and that thing that wanted to strip my skin as I dangled alive. Forget my pack, forget trying to find my NVG’s or my Rifle, I needed to make a massive loop from Texas all along the coast all the way up to Canada in less than a week, even then I might not lose it.

  The tight curve in the canyon came out of know where. I didn’t have time to slow down much less stop. I hit the worms second trap, and it sent me and my truck tumbling down the side of the road ten feet into the bottom of the canyon.

  My truck was now lying on the driver’s side door. A stupid mistake, I knew that the second trap was there. After crawling through my truck gathering a few things, laptop, camera, bottle of water, I climbed out and sat on the driver side door, the mechanics truck wouldn’t make it over the first obstacle even if I managed to hot wire it.

  I slid off my truck and slowly climbed back up to the road. Slowly I walked out of the canyon. If I was lucky there might be a tractor or something in one of those barns at the foot of the mountain, I doubted it would help. By the time I rolled into town the Rocky Mountain horror would be in the valley if it wasn’t already.